The European and Global Drought Observatories (EDO-GDO), part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, are implemented by JRC. They provide up-to-date and continuous information on the occurrence, evolution, severity, and potential impacts of drought at global and European scales. In 2023, CIMA Research Foundation and Deltares have been tasked to help ensure the continuity, development and harmonization of the service.
The project and CIMA Research Foundation’s role
Studies estimate that, due to climate change, droughts will become increasingly frequent and intense in different areas of the world, such as the Mediterranean basin. Monitoring their presence and evolution is therefore becoming increasingly important to try to put in place timely responses, with a view to preventing impacts. For this reason, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), the European Union’s program that provides information for emergency responses to natural and man-made disasters, has activated the European and Global Drought Observatories (EDO-GDOs). The EDO-GDOs operate on a European and global scale by collecting information from various sources (in situ and remotely) that allows them to verify the presence and characterize a possible drought. They also assess the possible impacts of the droughts.
CIMA Research Foundation works in this context, leading from 2023 to 2027 the consortium of which Deltares is responsible for processing and supplying the products that feed the two systems. Activities focus on the development and maintenance of a dedicated system aimed at retrieving, processing, and storing data from multiple sources, ensuring the required quality and a transfer and mirroring of data with the JRC.
In more detail, our activities contribute to the calculation of drought indices based on satellite data; the collection and processing of temperature and precipitation reanalysis products to generate SPI, SPEI, and heat and cold wave indices; and the generation of drought indices based on seasonal forecasts available in the Copernicus Climate Data Store. To ensure a consistently state-of-the-art solution, these 3 services are complemented by a fourth dedicated to system maintenance, undertaken with a perfective, adaptive, and corrective approach.
The system is designed to use the best available sources as inputs as soon as the required data sets become available. These inputs are then processed through flexible but consistent procedures to calculate drought indicators and provide timely and comparable information on drought conditions to EDO and GDO users.
What are the expected results?
- Development of technological services to retrieve, process and perform quality control of hydro-meteorological inputs from different satellite and modelling sources (precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, vegetation conditions)
- Implementation of technological services to support efficient computing of meteorological, hydrological and agrological drought indicators
- Establishment of an IT infrastructure to sustain data provision and processing
