A new global database of meteorological drought events from 1951 to 2016

STUDY REGION: This study has three spatial scales: global (0.5°), macro-regional, and country scale. The database of drought events has specific entries for each macro-region and country. STUDY FOCUS: We constructed a database of meteorological drought events from 1951 to 2016, now hosted by the Global Drought Observatory of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Events were detected at macro-regional and country scale based on the separate analysis of the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) at different accumulation scales (from 3 to 72 months), using as input the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) and Climatic…