A Set of Satellite-Based Near Real-Time Meteorological Drought Monitoring Data over China

A high-resolution and near real-time drought monitoring dataset has not been made readily available in drought-prone China, except for the low-resolution global product. Here we developed a set of near real-time meteorological drought data at a 0.25 degrees spatial resolution over China, by seamlessly merging the satellite-based near real-time (RT) precipitation (3B42RTv7) into the high-quality gauge-based retrospective product (CN05.1) using the quantile-mapping (QM) bias-adjustment method. Comparing the standard precipitation index (SPI) from the satellite-gauge merged product (SGMP) with that from the retrospective ground product CN05.1 (OBS) shows that the SGMP reproduces well the observed spatial distribution of SPI and the pattern of meteorological drought across China, at both the 6-month and 12-month time scales. In contrast, the UN-SGMP generated by merging the unadjusted raw satellite precipitation into the gauging data shows systematical overestimation of the SPI, leaving less meteorological droughts to be identified. Furthermore, the SGMP is found to be able to capture the inter-annual variation of percentage area in meteorological droughts. These validation results suggest that the newly developed drought dataset is reliable for monitoring meteorological drought dynamics in near real-time. This dataset will be routinely updated as the satellite RT precipitation is made available, thus facilitating near real-time drought diagnosis in China.