Drought variability in the Iberian Peninsula in the last 500 year, a methodological approach
Spain suffers frequently the drought effects due to the climatic characteristics of the region and it is the natural hazard that causes strongest economic and environmental losses. Unfortunately, drought has particular characteristics that makes difficult its study, quantification and management. Some of them are its slow development, difficulties in the attribution of impacts or its large geographical distribution. The majority of the studies that analyzed droughts in Spain have been developed using climate information for the last 100 years. However, this period is too short to study a phenomenon as complex as drought. To increase the time framework in the study of drought is essential to analyze the low frequency variability and long-term trends, the return periods of drought events, the atmospheric mechanisms that control drought severity on different time scales, the relation between drought index and impacts in different sectors or the capability of global and regional climatic models for the detection of droughts variability. For these reasons DRO500 main objective is to characterize droughts in the Iberian Peninsula for a long term perspective by means of the development of new methods that allow joining instrumental, pre-instrumental and documentary proxy data. This will allow to analyze long term determining atmospheric mechanisms and impacts, as well as to analyze the capacity of climate models to identify drought variability. This general objective will be subdivided in six specific objectives: i) to retrieve new data for the study of drought in the last five centuries, ii) to harmonize, combine and homogenize precipitation time series for the study period thanks to the development and application of new methodologies, iii) to develop homogeneous series for drought index over long periods, iv) to analyze drought variability and its driven atmospheric circulation mechanisms considering a long term perspective, v) to develop for the first time a long term database of drought impacts based on technologies of information and to analyse the obtained data in relation to the obtained drought indices, vi) To validate climatic models in preinstrumental period, both based on the developed drought indices and the impact dataset. The project is highly innovative since it proposes to develop new methodologies for the study of droughts using information extracted from documentary sources: i) to develop and evaluate a drought index based on precipitation frequency, ii) to develop new methodologies to transform information from documentary proxies into homogeneous drought indices comparable to those widely used in the instrumental period, iii) to develop a new computing tool for the massive consultation and information retrieval of historical press with climate objectives. The results of DRO500 will allow a better understanding of the drought in Spain, which will improve the management of this risk as well as determine better its future evolution
Spain suffers frequently the drought effects due to the climatic characteristics of the region and it is the natural hazard that causes strongest economic and environmental losses. Unfortunately, drought has particular characteristics that makes difficult its study, quantification and management. Some of them are its slow development, difficulties in the attribution of impacts or its large geographical distribution. The majority of the studies that analyzed droughts in Spain have been developed using climate information for the last 100 years. However, this period is too short to study a phenomenon as complex as drought. To increase the time framework in the study of drought is essential to analyze the low frequency variability and long-term trends, the return periods of drought events, the atmospheric mechanisms that control drought severity on different time scales, the relation between drought index and impacts in different sectors or the capability of global and regional climatic models for the detection of droughts variability. For these reasons DRO500 main objective is to characterize droughts in the Iberian Peninsula for a long term perspective by means of the development of new methods that allow joining instrumental, pre-instrumental and documentary proxy data. This will allow to analyze long term determining atmospheric mechanisms and impacts, as well as to analyze the capacity of climate models to identify drought variability. This general objective will be subdivided in six specific objectives: i) to retrieve new data for the study of drought in the last five centuries, ii) to harmonize, combine and homogenize precipitation time series for the study period thanks to the development and application of new methodologies, iii) to develop homogeneous series for drought index over long periods, iv) to analyze drought variability and its driven atmospheric circulation mechanisms considering a long term perspective, v) to develop for the first time a long term database of drought impacts based on technologies of information and to analyse the obtained data in relation to the obtained drought indices, vi) To validate climatic models in preinstrumental period, both based on the developed drought indices and the impact dataset. The project is highly innovative since it proposes to develop new methodologies for the study of droughts using information extracted from documentary sources: i) to develop and evaluate a drought index based on precipitation frequency, ii) to develop new methodologies to transform information from documentary proxies into homogeneous drought indices comparable to those widely used in the instrumental period, iii) to develop a new computing tool for the massive consultation and information retrieval of historical press with climate objectives. The results of DRO500 will allow a better understanding of the drought in Spain, which will improve the management of this risk as well as determine better its future evolution