Characteristics of global and regional drought, 1950-2000: Analysis of soil moisture data from off-line simulation of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle

Abstract

Drought occurrence is analyzed over global land areas for 1950-2000 using soil moisture data from a simulation of the terrestrial water cycle with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land surface model, which is forced by an observation based meteorological data set. A monthly drought index based on percentile soil moisture values relative to the 50-year climatology is analyzed in terms of duration, intensity and severity at global and regional scales. Short-term droughts (