Global assessment of subnational drought impact based on the Geocoded Disasters dataset and land reanalysis

Abstract

Despite the importance of a link between hydrometeorological drought hazards and their socioeconomic impact, the link at a subnational level has yet to be evaluated due to the lack of precise subnational information on disaster locations. Using the newly developed Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) dataset, we examined whether the subnational socioeconomic drought impact information in GDIS could be represented by hydrometeorological hazards quantified from soil moisture in ERA5-Land during 1964–2018. We found that the socioeconomic drought impacts shown in GDIS were generally represented by drought hazards quantified from ERA5-Land soil moisture. Our comparison between GDIS and ERA5-Land could benefit the quantification of vulnerability to drought, and we found that sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia were vulnerable to drought, while North America and Europe were less vulnerable to drought. Both GDIS and ERA5-Land indicated that the Horn of Africa, northern China, and western India were drought-prone areas. Since it is difficult for national-level analyses to accurately identify the locations of drought-prone areas, especially in large countries such as China and India, our analysis clarifies the importance of the use of subnational disaster information.