Excellent overview of global warming related drought issues in the U.S. Note that other countries are also exhibiting the same problems, such as Australia, and Russia, to name a couple.
General:
- http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln55/ednote55.html
Russia:
- http://research.uwb.edu/jaffegroup/publications/Siberia.pdf
- http://fire.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/research/climate_change/activites/firebear_e...
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/may/31/environment.russia
Australia:
- http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-89023209.html

Last year, 60 Minutes did a good story on mega-fires in the western US:

The Age Of Mega-Fires
Expert: Warming Climate Fueling Mega-Fires

..."A fire of this size and this intensity in this country would have been extremely rare 15, 20 years they're commonplace these days," Boatner says.

"Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire. And if we had one or two of those a year, that was probably unusual. Now we talk about 200,000 acre fires like it's just another day at the office. It's been a huge change," he says.

Asked what the biggest fires now are, Boatner says, "We’ve had, I believe, two fires this summer that have been over 500,000 acres, half a million acres, and one of those was over 600,000 acres."

"You wouldn’t have expected to see this how recently?" Pelley asks.

"We got records going back to 1960 of the acres burned in America. So, that's 47 fire seasons. Seven of the 10 busiest fire seasons have been since 1999," Boatner says.

...

"You know, there are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change," Pelley remarks.

"You won't find them on the fire line in the American West anymore," Tom Boatner says. "'Cause we've had climate change beat into us over the last ten or fifteen years. We know what we’re seeing, and we're dealing with a period of climate, in terms of temperature and humidity and drought that's different than anything people have seen in our lifetimes." ...

There's some amazing footage of forests turning into deserts: blackened tree trunks rising from the new desert floor.

Very bad news.

Anyone remember the mega fires in the amazon rainforest last year?

"South America chokes as Amazon burns"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/south-america-chokes-as...

"Roberto Smeraldi, head of Friends of the Earth Brazil, said the situation was out of control: "We have a strong concentration of fires, corresponding to more than 10,000 points of fire across a large area of about two million sq km in the southern Brazilian Amazon and Bolivia."