European Drought Observatory

The European drought observatory (EDO) is a service run by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The EDO portal contains drought information, graphs and time-series at European level. These data can be freely downloaded for offline analysis. EDO also provides a tool enabling the comparison between several indicators or the comparison between the values of a same indicator at different times.

The monitoring of droughts is based on the analysis of a series of indicators, representing different components of the hydrological cycle (e.g. precipitation, soil moisture, reservoir levels, river flow, groundwater levels) or specific impacts (e.g. vegetation water stress) that are associated with a particular type of drought.

EDO produces the following drought indicators at the European scale:

• Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)
• Standardized Snowpack Index (SSPI)
• Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA)
• Anomaly of Vegetation Condition (FAPAR Anomaly)
• Low-Flow Index (LFI)
• Heat and Cold Wave Index (HCWI)
• Combined Drought Indicator (CDI)

More information can be found on the EDO portal. Archived drought reports are available here.