 In the Anthropocene, the state of water stores and fluxes has become dependent on human as well as natural processes. Drought definitions need to be revisited to explicitly include human processes backslash and driving and modifying soil moisture drought and hydrological drought. We give recommendations for robust drought definitions to avoid confusion with related terms such as water scarcity and overexploitation. This article was authored by AF Van Loon, Kastal, G. D. Baldisari and others.