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Changes in the hydrological conditions of the land surface have substantial impacts on society^,. Yet assessments of observed continental dryness trends yield contradicting results^,,,,. The concept that dry regions dry out further, whereas wet regions become wetter as the climate warms has been proposed as a simplified summary of expected^,, as well as observed^,,,, changes over land, although this concept is mostly based on oceanic data^,. Here we present an analysis of more than 300 combinations of various hydrological data sets of historical land dryness changes covering the period from 1948 to 2005. Each combination of data sets is benchmarked against an empirical relationship between evaporation, precipitation and aridity. Those combinations that perform well are used for trend analysis. We find that over about three-quarters of the global land area, robust dryness changes cannot be detected. Only 10.8 …