Droughts are costly environmental hazards that can have detrimental effects on water resources and agriculture. Precipitation deficits and warmer air temperature can lead to water shortages that propagate through the terrestrial water cycle and manifest as deficits in snow water equivalent, soil moisture, and streamflow. Our study uses multi-decadal, global datasets to gain insight into the extent to which drought characteristics (e.g., severity, persistence) and their impacts are changing in time across a variety of ecoregions and climate zones around the world. We examine different types of droughts (e.g., meteorological, snow, agricultural, hydrological) associated with deficits in various hydrologic variables (e.g., precipitation, snow, soil moisture, streamflow) and how one deficit or drought type may contribute to another. We also quantify trends and uncertainty in drought characteristics, evolution, and propagation to aid in drought prediction and mitigation approaches.