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Trends In Drought Over The Northeast United States, Nir Y. Krakauer, Tarendra Lakhankar, Damien Hudson
Trends In Drought Over The Northeast United States, Nir Y. Krakauer, Tarendra Lakhankar, Damien Hudson
Publications and Research
The Northeast United States is a generally wet region that has had substantial increases in mean precipitation over the past decades, but also experiences damaging droughts. We evaluated drought frequency, intensity, and duration trends in the region over the period 1901–2015. We used a dataset of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), a measure of water balance based on meteorology that is computed at multiple timescales. It was found that the frequency of droughts decreased over this period, but their average intensity and duration did not show consistent changes. There was an increase in mean SPEI, indicating mostly wetter conditions, but …