final_program_abstracts[1]

11 IMSC Session Program
The Palmer Drought Severity Index considered in Europe with
an ensemble of models - present day, and future expectations
Thursday - Poster Session 6
Cathrine Fox Maule and Peter Thejll
Danish Climate Centre, DMI, Copenhagen, Denmark
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) has recently been reformulated in a selfcalibrating
framework to address problems related to local effects in the original
PDSI. The PDSI depends on (lack of) precipitation, evapotranspiration, and water
holding capacity of the soil at a given place, and how the two first parameters vary
with time. We investigate the performance of the new index with an ensemble of
regional climate models from the ENSEMBLES project - all driven by the ERA40
reanalysis. The quality of extreme drought predictions made by the new index will be
investigated by comparison to observations, and the validated method is then applied
to a set of models forced in accordance with the future emissions scenario A1B. Using
a suite of models allows us to evaluate which model predictions of drought are robust.
Abstracts 285