Drought Atlas for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC_DROUGHT)

The LAC Drought Atlas contains digital drought maps for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is based on a historical drought frequency analysis through regional frequency analysis using L-moments (RFA-L).

The Atlas provides maps and site-specific estimations of maximum and minimum precipitation for return periods of 5, 10, 50 and 100 years. For Chile and Peru it also contains  maps and graphs showing the return periods for droughts, expressed as either a 20%, 40%, 60% or 80% deficit compared to mean precipitation amounts. A point-and-click action on the provided maps allows to get a site-specific estimation for a location.

The RFA-L method determines the frequency of drought events by pooling stations in climatologically homogeneous regions. The method operates by including information from nearby stations exhibiting similar statistical behavior as at the site under consideration in order to obtain more reliable estimates. This allows application of more robust statistics, especially in regions with limited precipitation datasets, such as the drylands. It is also an improvement over normal moment theory, as outliers and extreme events do not disproportionately influence distribution selection. As such, the RFA-L method is considered by the authors the most appropriate method in regions with interannual variability and short record lengths.

The Drought Atlas was developed by CAZALAC in collaboration with the International Center for Integrated Water Resource Management (ICIWaRM) and the European Joint Research Centre (JRC).