Abstract
The characterization of yearly drought events represents a key information for conducting impact assessments and forecasting future threats, and usually relies on a single index of duration or severity. Mostly based on daily soil or atmospheric water balances, the derivation of key drought facets is not yet standardized or embedded in a single tool, thus limiting intercomparisons between studies. We developed DFEAT as a fully-automated tool designed to characterize yearly drought features, based on any simulated/observed/remotely sensed soil water content time series. We provide here an application assessment performed with the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI) as a standard daily soil water model over a 60-year period and covering the Mediterranean aridity gradient in Lebanon (Middle-East) experiencing humid to semi-arid climate conditions. We computed and tested 19 drought features related to duration, severity, onset, offset, drying and wetting rates, driest peak day, and rainfall pulses across three soil water desiccation thresholds. For our study area, we revealed the uncorrelated specificities of 6 features, allowing to regionally discriminate between mountainous Mediterranean climate experiencing shorter drought duration (45 days), later onset (Day of the Year = 198), less rainfall pulses intensities (3.35 mm), and slower drying (1.68 mm/day) and wetting (−2.72 mm/day) rates, but similar offset date (Day of the Year = 356) compared to the coast. DFEAT also captured regions with prolonged Multi-Year Droughts not fully refilling field capacity under arid bioclimate reaching up to 22 years. We demonstrate here the applicability of DFEAT across water-limited bioclimates and the non-correlation between drought features with contrasted agro-ecological impacts.