Abstract
Drought-related disasters are among the natural disasters that are able to cause large economic and social losses. In recent years, droughts have affected different regions of Brazil, impacting water, food, and energy security. In this study, we used the Integrated Drought Index (IDI), which combines a meteorological-based drought index and remote sensing-based index, to assess the drought events from 2011 to 2019 over Brazil. During this period, drought events were observed throughout the country, being most severe and widespread between the years 2011 and 2017. In most of the country, the 2014/15 hydrological year stands out due to the higher occurrence of severe and moderate droughts. However, drought intensity and observed impacts were different for each region, which is shown by the different case studies, assessing different types of impacts caused by drought in Brazil. Thus, it is fundamental to evaluate the impacts of droughts in a continental country such as Brazil, where a variety of vegetation, soil, land use, and especially different climate regimes predominate.
Highlights
The frequency of extreme weather and climate events has increased in recent years, with events showing greater intensity and duration
The thermal condition of vegetation (TCI) algorithm is similar to the VCI one, but relates to brightness temperature T estimated from the thermal infrared band of AVHRR
Since this study focuses on the annual drought assessment, the Integrated Drought Index (IDI) was calculated based on 12 months (IDI-12) of integrated values of Vegetation Health Index (VHI) and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for the hydrological year (October to September)
Summary
The frequency of extreme weather and climate events has increased in recent years, with events showing greater intensity and duration. It must be highlighted that any single index is not enough to precisely depict rainfall deficit or main drought characteristics [6] In this way, the combination of different indicators that integrate various sources of information may help to better achieve consistent drought monitoring and impacts assessments. As seen in the upcoming sections, this period included the biggest droughts in decades, which have affected various regions of Brazil, generating water crises that affected diverse economic sectors and, the population, as well as increasing the number of fire events due to increased risk of fire under dry–warm surface conditions. The assessment was performed by means of the IDI, which is an especially important indicator for characterizing water deficit, as well as monitoring the drought impacts on natural vegetation and crops robustness [34]
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