Reflections on drought phenomenon from western Romania based on station-observed climatological data

Droughts are one of the costlier natural hazards on a year-to-year basis considering their impacts which are generally significant and widespread. Monitoring these events is a vital process in the efforts of predicting, analyzing and recovering after. A clear understanding of droughts and their behavior will improve the resilience of the affected regions and their capacity to recover after such events. It is important to note that the impacts of droughts can be as varied as the causes of droughts. Drought represents the effects of water demands unmet by the available resources. Regional characteristics of a drought, such as covered area, total water deficit, or return time, are very important in determining the phenomenon’s severity.  Worldwide, over 100 drought indices were developed, each of them with specific features and approaching different aspects of drought.

In this article, several drought indices (SPI (Standardized Precipitation Index), RAI (Rainfall Anomaly Index), RDI (Reconnaissance Drought Index) and SPEI (standard index of rainfall drought)) will be used for a critical analysis of drought in the last 50 years (1968 - 2018) in western Romania (Timisoara area). These indices will be calculated using several programs (DRINC, RDIT, CLIC-MD) recently introduced in Romanian research institutions for drought estimation and monitoring. We compared the results for SPI indicating the correlations among drought indices calculated with these programs and emphasized the pros and cons for each of these tools.

We also present the effects of drought in relation with land management from western Romania as well as the main key recommendations from the national strategy on mitigation of drought effects.