A quantitative analysis to objectively appraise drought indicators and model
drought impacts

Bachmair, S.; Svensson, C.; Hannaford, J.; Barker, L. J.; Stahl, K.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2589-2016

Articles | Volume 20, issue 7

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 2589–2609, 2016

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2589-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue: HYPER Droughts (HYdrological Precipitation – Evaporation...

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 2589–2609, 2016

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2589-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 7

Research article 04 Jul 2016

Research article | 04 Jul 2016

A quantitative analysis to objectively appraise drought indicators and model drought impacts

S. Bachmair et al.

Data sets

E-OBS gridded dataset on temperature and precipitation, EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com, http://www.ecad.eu

River flow data National River Flow Archive (NRFA) http://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/

European Drought Reference (EDR) database and the European Drought Impact Report Inventory (EDII), DROUGHT R&SPI project European Drought Centre http://www.geo.uio.no/edc/droughtdb/

Short summary

To date, there is little empirical evidence as to which indicator best represents drought impact occurrence for any given region and/or sector. We therefore exploited text-based data from the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII) to evaluate drought indicators, empirically determine indicator thresholds, and model drought impacts. A quantitative analysis using Germany and the UK as a testbed proved to be a useful tool for objectively appraising drought indicators.