About Drought Handbook: Outputs & Impacts

DROUGHT DATA HUB
The Drought Data Hub provides a simple, visual summary of the huge data
outputs from About Drought – and allows users to quickly get access to the
data for a specfic area or river. It also shows a snapshot of what future flows
are going to look like for any of 300 rivers across Great Britain (Northern
Ireland data is not currently available). You can view both spatial coverage
and detailed information.
https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/hydrology/drought-data-hub
What does it do?
The datasets have been set out in a
way that is easy to understand and
access, enabling users to extract
specific subsets of data for a particular
location.
The Drought Data Hub also visualises
some of the expected climate change
impacts on UK river flows, produced
in the MaRIUS project. Users can see
the changes in flows for any selected
month for a near future (2050s) or far
future (2080s) period.
It also integrates modelled outputs
from across the programme.
Who is it for?
It is available for use by anyone who
wants to access data from About
Drought, including researchers, water
companies, consultants, regulators and
students.
DROUGHT INVENTORY
EXPLORER
Matt Fry, Environmental Informatics
Manager, at the Centre for
Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) says:
“One of the new features we
are particularly excited about is
the ability to extract catchment
average data, for instance, rainfall
for an area of interest. Previously
to get a small subset of, for
example, CEH gridded estimates
of area rainfall (GEAR) users
would have to download hundreds
of gigabytes of daily 1km grids for
the whole of the UK; now they can
upload a shape file (up to a certain
size), and view and download a
catchment average rainfall for that
area within seconds.”
Historic Droughts has produced the Drought Inventory – a wide ranging set
of information on past drought impacts from sources such as 19th Century
newspapers, agricultural statistics, the parliamentary record Hansard,
drought orders, hosepipe bans and the agricultural press such as Farmer’s
Weekly.
https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/hydrology/drought-inventory
What does it do?
It is set up to allow users to search the
whole inventory either for key words
or for specific drought episodes, or to
look at specific types of media.
Searching allows you to see the timing
of these impacts throughout the
drought event.
Matt adds: “While our other
hydrological data such as rainfall or
flow indicators might tell us that
rivers were low in 1933, for example,
the Drought Inventory Explorer can
help users see when drought was
reported in newspapers through that
year and see that the reports peaked
in September 1933. You can get a feel
for the way the drought was described
and who it affected.”
Who is it for?
Anyone interested in researching past
drought including authors, schools,
researchers of history, and people
interested in public engagement
around drought.
What difference does it make?
The Historic Drought Inventory is
a valuable and fascinating resource
providing detailed excerpts of
information about past droughts that
had previously little data.
Each item of information has
been standardised to include the
date the impact was reported, the
source of information and – where
available – a location, and a short
excerpt of the report.
Matt says: “While this diversity
of sources can make direct
comparisons difficult, there is a
huge range of information about
past droughts that we wanted to
make more accessible.”
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