A near real-time drought monitoring system for Spain using automatic weather station network

Drought monitoring is essential to determine, at short time intervals, the main characteristics of drought events, such as their duration, severity, and spatial distribution. To ensure that represents a useful tool for governmental plans aimed preventing or minimizing impacts, up-to-date information must be instantaneously accessible it provide high temporal resolution. This study presents system allows automatic tracking meteorological droughts in Spanish territory, based on an open easy-to-use online platform (https://monitordesequia.csic.es/monitor). provides two synthetic indices: Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) Evapotranspiration (SPEI). Information provided quasi-weekly basis, grid format, with resolution 1.1*1.1 km, data from 1961 present time. monitor updated real-time gathered stations, which turn requires historic identify track events. The indices are obtained processing (quality control, series reconstruction, homogenisation, interpolation, validation) using climatic variables (maximum minimum temperatures, solar radiation, rainfall, dew point, wind speed) by Meteorology Agency Ministry Agriculture Government. We performed validation whole historical period (1961–2020). allowed us observe strong agreement between dataset dataset, especially mainland Spain Balearic Islands (Pearson's r, SPI SPEI >0.99). presented relevant quick effective actions prevent mitigate effects society ecosystems.