This month’s global drought map

A monthly map based on a Composite Drought Index (CDI) is generated to show the areas under various degrees of drought relative to the average monthly conditions at global scale. It considers the causative variables of multi drought forms (mainly meteorological and agricultural). The resulting map is formed by integrating several remotely sensed data sets from NASA, NOAA and other U.S. agencies into a composite drought index. The weightings of the different data set input to the CDI have been calculated based on a global land use map to reflect the sensitivity of each category to the drought conditions.