Drought Characteristics Assessment in Europe over the Past 50 Years

The questions of scale, limit, and areal extent are central points for any drought assessment effort. Drought indices, such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), are assisting to demarcate drought characteristics and spatial extent. The current approach utilizes the E-OBS gridded dataset's hydro-climatic parameters (precipitation, minimum and maximum temperature) for applying SPI and SPEI on a Pan-European scale for a detail drought assessment during the 1969–2018 period. The two indices are estimated for the 6 and 12-month scales. In this effort, drought is defined as an event that has index value less than minus 1.5 for at least three consecutive months. Based on this, drought characteristics (frequency, duration, and severity) are derived. The results are displayed in 5-year windows and they are also assessed against independently recorded droughts as occurred. Overall, it may be reported that there has been little change in drought characteristics over the past 50 years in Europe. Furthermore, given the variety of climatic locales on a continental level, the 6 and 12-month time scales for both indices may offer an improvement on drought critical areas identification, threshold definitions, and comparability.