Drought Between 1963 and 2017 in the Federal District, Brazil

Abstract

Drought is a climatic extreme caused by the precipitation deficit, which results in low water availability for different human activities. The drought characterization regarding of its duration and severity is still little explored, especially in regions where drought is not recurrent in a short time scale. With that in mind, this study presents a quantitative evaluation of the drought events occurred between 1964 and 2017 in the Federal District, with an emphasis on the last drought of 2016-2017. For this, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was used to evaluate the duration and severity of drought events and the Vegetation Supply Water Index (VSWI) for the spatial analysis of the drought impacts on vegetation. According to the SPI, the longest and most severe drought event, occurred in 1998. The most recent drought 2016-2017 started in April, beginning of the dry period, but remained throughout the wet season (October 2016 to March 2017). Considering ranking of duration and severity, among all the longest and severe events occurred in Brasilia, since 1963, this recent drought event can be positioned in sixth and in fourth position respectively, emphasizing its study importance in scientific community. According to VSWI, in the last drought event, the areas impacted by drought reached 75% of the Federal District

Keywords

• Federal District
• Drought
• SPI
• VSWI