An event-oriented database of droughts in Europe based on spatio-temporal clustering Article Swipe
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· 2022
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1920628/v1
· OA: W4290667606
Droughts evolve in space and time without following borders or pre-determined temporal constraints. Here, we present a new database of drought events built with a three-dimensional density-based clustering algorithm. The chosen approach is able to track the spatio-temporal evolution of an event, and it was tuned against a set of past global droughts characterized independently by multiple experts. About 200 events were detected over Europe in the period 1981–2020 using SPI-3 (3-month cumulated Standardized Precipitation Index) maps derived from the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts) 5th generation reanalysis (ERA5) precipitation. The largest European meteorological droughts during this period occurred in 1996, 2003, 2002 and 2018. A good agreement between the major events identified by the algorithm and drought impact records was found, as well as with previous datasets based on pre-defined regions.
