Drought Characteristics Assessment in Europe over the Past 50 Years

Panagiotis D. Oikonomou (), Christos A. Karavitis, Demetrios E. Tsesmelis, Elpida Kolokytha and Rodrigo Maia
Additional contact information
Panagiotis D. Oikonomou: University of Vermont
Christos A. Karavitis: Agricultural University of Athens
Demetrios E. Tsesmelis: Agricultural University of Athens
Elpida Kolokytha: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Rodrigo Maia: University of Porto

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2020, vol. 34, issue 15, No 13, 4757-4772

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: Drought; Drought characteristics; Drought index; Standardized precipitation index; SPI; SPEI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11269-020-02688-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:34:y:2020:i:15:d:10.1007_s11269-020-02688-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-020-02688-0

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().