The Evaporative Demand Drought Index. Part II: CONUS-Wide Assessment against Common Drought Indicators

Abstract

Precipitation, soil moisture, and air temperature are the most commonly used climate variables to monitor drought; however, other climatic factors such as solar radiation, wind speed, and humidity can be important drivers in the depletion of soil moisture and evolution and persistence of drought. This work assesses the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) at multiple time scales for several hydroclimates as the second part of a two-part study. EDDI and individual evaporative demand components were examined as they relate to the dynamic evolution of flash drought over the central United States, characterization of hydrologic drought over the western United States, and comparison to commonly used drought metrics of the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Soil Moisture Index (SSI), and the evaporative stress index (ESI). Two main advantages of EDDI over other drought indices are that it is independent of precipitation (similar to ESI) and it can be decomposed to identify the role individual evaporative drivers have on drought onset and persistence. At short time scales, spatial distributions and time series results illustrate that EDDI often indicates drought onset well in advance of the USDM, SPI, and SSI. Results illustrate the benefits of physically based evaporative demand estimates and demonstrate EDDI’s utility and effectiveness in an easy-to-implement agricultural early warning and long-term hydrologic drought–monitoring tool with potential applications in seasonal forecasting and fire-weather monitoring.