The evolution of climatic drought studies in Spain over the last few decades

Abstract

This study reviews the evolution of scientific research on climatic droughts in Spain over the last few decades. The complexity of this natural hazard and the wide incidence of droughts in Spain have led to great interest from scientists in Spain, and generated a significant amount of scientific work on the topic over the last two decades. Climatic drought studies have evolved from predominantly descriptive studies up to the 1990s to highly diverse research topics, which include the development of indices, tools and datasets, the study of drought hazard probability, the analysis of drought variability and trends, including research on long term drought reconstructions and analysis with instrumental data, an assessment of drought mechanisms and drivers, and drought modeling, including how models represent droughts, and applying models to drought forecasting and future projections. The study of climatic droughts in Spain is highly internationalized, since most of the current scientific studies are published in high-impact international journals and, nowadays, do not only cover Spain, but also other world regions as well as continental and global studies.