Assessment of trends, variability and impacts of droughts across Brazil over the period 1980-2019.

Drought indices are a numerical representation of drought conditions aimed to provide quantitative assessments of the magnitude, spatial extent, timing, and duration of drought events. Since the adverse effects of droughts vary according to the characteristics of the event, the socioeconomic vulnerabilities, exposed communities or environments, there is a profusion of drought indicators to assess drought impacts in different sectors. In this study, we evaluated the performance of two drought indices, the Standardized Precipitation Index-SPI and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index-SPEI over Brazil derived from gridded meteorological information over the period 1980-2019. Firstly, we compared the gridded derived indices against the same indices derived from weather station data and available from a global dataset for time scales of 3, 6, 12, 24 months. Then we analyzed the spatio-temporal trends in SPI and SPEI time-series, which revealed statistically significant trends toward drier conditions across central Brazil for all time scales, though with more intensity for time scales of 12 months and larger. Trends were more significant in magnitude for SPEI than SPI, indicating an important role in the increase in evaporation, driven by increasingly higher temperatures. Finally, we demonstrated that climate signals are already having a disruptive effect on the country's energy security. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11069-022-05759-0.

Drought monitoring in the Brazilian Semiarid region.

Drought is a natural and recurrent phenomenon. It is considered 'a natural disaster' whenever it occurs in an intensive manner in highly populated regions, resulting in significant damage (material and human) and loss (socioeconomic). This paper presents the efforts developed to monitor the impact of drought in the semiarid region of Northeast Brazil. In this scope, information from different sources is compiled to support the evaluation and identification of impacted municipalities, with the main objective of supporting emergency actions to mitigate their impact. In the semiarid region of Brazil there are frequent occurrences of dry periods during the rainy season, which, depending on the intensity and duration, can cause significant damage to family-farmed crops, with a farming system characterized by low productivity indices. However, rain-fed agriculture has great economic expression and high social importance due to the region is densely occupied, and contributes to the establishment of communities in the countryside. Specifically, in the present study, the methodology adopted to monitor the impact of agricultural droughts, including an analysis of the hydrological year 2015-2016, is presented, considering different water stress indicators for the identification of the affected municipalities and assessment of the methods and tools developed.