In recent years, climate research has intensified and concern over the possibility that humans may be altering the global climate has stimulated funding for increased study of global warming and its consequences. With the 2002 drought in the United States having been especially severe, and droughts in other parts of the world causing hunger, starvation, and fueling conflicts over scarce resources, it becomes increasingly important that young people have a quality resource for answering their questions about the phenomenon. Droughts, Revised Edition is a fully updated and revised version of the successful previous edition. Several new chapters include coverage of topics such as the geography of deserts; climate cycles and oscillations, describing the ways climates change for entirely natural reasons - reasons that have nothing to do with our emissions of greenhouse gases; and life in deserts. Sidebars display detailed explanations or interesting pieces of information without interrupting the main flow of the text. These explain concepts from atmospheric science, such as adiabatic cooling and warming, potential temperature, lapse rates, and the inter-tropical convergence and equatorial trough, as well as biological processes. This volume also contains 65 black-and-white illustrations, graphs, tables, and chart; an index; a bibliography; and appendixes.