Experts agree on a universal drought index
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With climate change, the frequency and magnitude of droughts are very likely to increase. In the “Lincoln declaration on drought indices”, 54 experts from all regions agreed on the use of a universal meteorological drought index for more effective drought monitoring and climate risk management. They agreed that the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) should be used to characterize meteorological droughts by all National Meteorological and Hydrological Services around the world. The SPI is an index based on the probability of precipitation for any time scale using the long-term precipitation record. |
SPI index has been commonly used world-wide, however, it has also some drawbacks. Since it uses normal distribution, it designates low and high probabilities at the same amount. It also lacks for not including temperature (or evapotranspiration parameter effect)