Drought monitoring in Slovakia

Abstract

The drought is much discussed phenomena in the latest years, because of its more frequent occurrence and the stronger intensity. For this reason, the monitoring of dry conditions is very important. The Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute (SHMI) monitors the meteorological and soil drought since 2015, and then in 2017, the monitoring of the surface water level and monitoring of the water resources with the drought impacts on the agriculture and forestry was added in 2017. The products are public and freely available on the SHMI webpage. The monitoring aims on the evolution of climatic conditions regarding to the beginning, the development and intensity of drought. The monitoring of meteorological drought is updating on weekly basis and the additional product is the forecast of drought for following 10 days. The used indices are SPEI and SPI. Both indices are calculated using flowing window with accumulation period of 30 days. Nowadays, the monitoring is only for selected 41 meteorological stations, but it is planned to convert it to grid resolution 1 km and on daily basis. The monitoring of soil drought is produced on weekly basis in the cooperation with CzechGlobe, from Brno, Czech Republic. The soil data are computed by SoilClim model in 0.5x0.5 km grid. The one part of soil drought monitoring is the characterisation of drought impacts on local scale. Drought impacts are evaluated in forestry and agriculture by experts. The model results and the answers from questionnaire are annually summarized and compared themselves. In this case the cooperation among experts from various departments is inevitable.