Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463

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Climate Services
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cliser

A drought monitoring and early warning service for food security in

South Africa
Vasileios Pavlidis a, *, Mahlatse Kganyago b, Mxolisi Mukhawana c, Thomas Alexandridis d,
Ines Cherif d, Giovanni Laneve e, Riccardo Orsi e, Stergios Kartsios a, Maria Chara Karypidou a,
Ioannis Sofiadis a, Eleni Katragkou a
a
Department of Meteorology and Climatology, School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
b
Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
c
Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), Private Bag x313, Pretoria, South Africa
d
Department of Hydraulics, Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
e
Scuola di ingegneria Aerospaziale, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In this paper we present an operational system for drought monitoring and early warning over South Africa-
Climate services Lesotho. The indicators used for the alert issuance are based on meteorological, agricultural and hydrological
Drought indices, assembled by satellite and reanalysis raw data, to cover for all aspects of drought. The service is
Drought monitoring
operationally updated every 10 days and has a spatial resolution of 10 Km. A severe drought period for South
Drought early warning
Combined Drought Indicator
Africa covering the time period 2017–2020 was used to test the performance of the drought system. Our analysis
Food security indicated that the service is useful, providing sufficient warning on the onsets of and duration of droughts.
Comparison of our results with a South African national drought service indicates a very good agreement in early
warning messaging. The service is particularly user friendly and easily transferable to any region worldwide.

region with higher spatial resolution if required, depending on

Practical implications
In this work we present an operational drought monitoring and
early warning system, developed in the context of the European
project AfriCultuReS aiming to enhance food security over Africa.
Its basic concept builds on the Combined Drought Indicator (CDI)
issued by the European Drought Observatory (EDO), however it is
calibrated and makes use of a different set of drought-indicators to
provide the drought alerts.
Multiple indicators including meteorological agricultural and
hydrological drought-indices are the backbone of this service,
compiled in a way to provide comprehensible and user-friendly
information to the stakeholder on the status, intensity and dura­
tion of drought. The current version of the service covers Africa
with a resolution of 10 Km and can easily be transferable to any
model and satellite data availability.
The current work is focusing on South Africa-Lesotho and presents
its ability to hindcast successfully past droughts of the region
during the period from 2017 to 2020. A case study over the Free
State province in 2019 is selected to showcase its operation and to
compare its performance with a local operational system issued by
the South African Department of Water and Sanitation. It proves
that the system is able to reproduce drought events correctly in
space and time and importantly, provide early warning for
drought impact on vegetation, especially over crop and grass­
lands. The issued warnings were in good agreement with warnings
issued by national services.

* Corresponding author at: Department of Meteorology and Climatology, School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Campus, Thessaloniki 54124,
Greece.
E-mail addresses: vpavlidis@geo.auth.gr (V. Pavlidis), mahlatsek@uj.ac.za (M. Kganyago), mukhawanaM@dws.gov.za (M. Mukhawana), thalex@agro.auth.gr
(T. Alexandridis), icherif@yahoo.com (I. Cherif), giovanni.laneve@uniroma1.it (G. Laneve), riccardo.orsi@uniroma1.it (R. Orsi), kartsios@geo.auth.gr
(S. Kartsios), karypidou@geo.auth.gr (M.C. Karypidou), sofiadis@geo.auth.gr (I. Sofiadis), katragou@geo.auth.gr (E. Katragkou).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2024.100463
Received 17 January 2023; Received in revised form 31 January 2024; Accepted 7 March 2024
Available online 16 March 2024
2405-8807/© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
V. Pavlidis et al. Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463

1. Introduction often have different record lengths and variable data quality, which
results in inconsistent regional drought analysis when using in-situ
Drought is one of the most devastating climate-related natural di­ rainfall data alone. Moreover, ground observations are generally limited
sasters in Sub-Saharan Africa, with adverse impacts on the economy, and sparse for most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, thus making the rean­
society, biodiversity and ecosystems, agriculture, and food security. alysis and satellite-based observations invaluable for bridging these data
Among the impacts, those on agricultural productivity are more severe gaps. The latter provide reasonable accuracy and spatial resolution for
and immediate, as they also result in significant losses of income, jobs, operational assessment, and monitoring of drought over data scarce
health and social wellbeing of the affected communities and compro­ areas.
mise national food security, in an already fragile economy challenged by This paper aims to present the drought early warning and monitoring
high unemployment rate. Agriculture contributes to about 3 % of South system for South Africa, designed under the framework of the Horizon
Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs 7 % of the work­ 2020 AfriCultuReS project, that makes use of reanalysis data and
force, with more than eight million people dependent on agricultural satellite-based observations. We showcase the potential of a drought
activities for their livelihoods (Schreiner et al., 2018). Inarguably, the early warning indicator, namely the Combined Drought Indicator over
agricultural sector in South Africa is one of the top water-demanding Africa (CDIa), that is based on the methodology of the Combined
sectors, amounting to about 60 % of its extent, which is attributed to Drought Indicator (CDI) used in the operational drought monitoring
the 1.6 million Ha of irrigated fields (DWA, 2013). However, the vast system of the European Drought Observatory, the (Cammalleri et al.,
amount of agricultural land is rain-fed, hence its high exposure to 2021; Sepulcre-Canto et al., 2012). The CDIa indicator makes use of the
climate-related risks, such as highly variable and sporadic rainfall pat­ soil moisture and rainfall deficits and their impacts on vegetation con­
terns. There is, therefore, a negative impact on about six million ditions using both re-analysis and satellite data. Essentially, the CDIa
smallholder farmers (Statistics South Africa, 2009) that are even more provides straightforward early warning messages to allow farmers and
exposed and vulnerable due to their greater reliance on agriculture and land managers to adopt coping mechanisms in time, to avoid devastating
lack of resources to avert and cope with changing and variable climatic yield losses.
conditions. South Africa has been experiencing increasingly intense and
prolonged drought conditions, making the agricultural market volatile 2. Data and methodology
and exacerbating household food security. Therefore, there is a need for
a drought early monitoring and warning system that could provide The AfriCultuReS (AfriCRS) project offers seven sectoral services in
actionable information on the onset, frequency, intensity and duration total, which are water, crop, land, livestock, drought, weather and
of droughts (Kganyago et al., 2021), in a user friendly way, tailored for a climate, aimed at providing decision support for food security for scales
range of users, including decision makers, smallholder farmers and the ranging from continental to local fields. The Drought Service encom­
general public. passes a seasonal drought forecast service (AfriCRS-S3-P01) and a short-
As gradual phenomena, droughts are difficult to detect and it may scale monitoring - early warning service (AfriCRS-S3-P02) issuing
take months to years before their impacts are noticeable. For example, warning messages with respect to the drought stage. Both services are
the onset, intensity and duration of droughts are experienced differently available through the dedicated AfriCRS platform (AfriCultuRes
by various sectors, and are commonly categorized into hydrological, platform).
agricultural/ecological, and meteorological droughts, which may In the following sections, we focus on the short-term Drought
eventually lead to socioeconomic drought. Consequently, several Monitoring and Early Warning Service (hereafter DM & EW), present its
drought indices have been developed to characterize the spatial, tem­ basic components and operational use and discuss its potential. While
poral and severity aspects of meteorological, hydrological, and agri­ the service is running operationally over the whole African continent,
cultural droughts based on precipitation deficiency and abnormal this study presents and evaluates the system over South Africa and
temperatures, e.g., Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), Standardized Lesotho.
Precipitation Index (SPI), water-levels and streamflow, e.g., Palmer
Hydrological Drought Index (PHDI) and Standardized Streamflow Index
(SSI), and vegetation indices, e.g., Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) and
Vegetation Health Index (VHI). Other indices, e.g., Soil Moisture Deficit
Index (SMDI) and Evapotranspiration Deficit Index (ETDI), are based on
soil moisture deficiency and evaporation processes. Indeed, traditional Table 1
Drought-related indices and products used in the Africultures Drought Moni­
approaches of computing most of these indices relied heavily on several
toring and Early Warning (DM & EW) Service.
ground station measurements. For instance, in South Africa, several
drought monitoring tools exist such as the National Integrated Water Product Dataset(s) Spatial Temporal Notes
resolution resolution
Management Information System (NIWIS) Drought portal (NIWIS
Drought portal) offered by the Department of Water and Sanitation, SPEI1/SPEI3 ECMWF- 0.25◦ (~30 Past 1/3 Precipitation
Umlindi-the Watchman newsletter (Umlindi-the Watchman portal) ERA5 km) Months deficit, main
reanalysis indicator
provided by the Agricultural Research Council, and South African SWCI Copernicus, 10 km Past 10 Soil water
Weather Services (SAWS) Drought Bulletin (SAWS Drought Bulletin). All EO days condition, main
rely on ground-based information to assess drought. In particular, the (dekad) indicator
NIWIS Drought portal uses Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to VCI AfriCRS-S02- 1 km Past 10 State of
P02 product days vegetation, main
integrate various ground-based weather and surface water information
VCI v2 (dekad) indicator
variables such as rainfall, dam levels, groundwater level, and river flow Precipitation IMERGV06 0.25◦ Past 1 Complementary
data. However, ground weather stations are costly to maintain and anomaly Late Run/ (~30 km) month indicator
operate, and are mostly unreliable or in non-operational state. For ERA5
example, Pitman (2011) assessed the state of water resources observa­ reanalysis
Consecutive NCEP/GFS 0.25◦ 7 days Complementary
tional networks (rainfall, surface and ground water, water quality) in SA dry days (~30 km) ahead indicator
and found that, there existed a decline in hydrological monitoring net­ Precipitation NCEP/GEFS 0.5◦ (~55 7 days Complementary
works country-wide. The decline continues to deteriorate today due to extremes km) ahead indicator
inadequate maintenance of monitoring stations as well as vandalism. In (0.1
quantile)
addition to precipitation data scarcity, different meteorological stations

2
V. Pavlidis et al.
2.1. Drought-related indices and products
The DM & EW service examines different aspects of drought by uti­
lizing different available indices and products (Table 1). Precipitation
deficit is identified by the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotrans­
piration Index (SPEI; Vicente-Serrano et al., 2010) for two accumulation
periods: One-month and three-months SPEI (SPEI1, SPEI3 respectively)
which are commonly used for drought monitoring to account for short-
term dryness and longer-term droughts with impacts on vegetation. SPEI
is calculated by using the ECMWF-ERA5 reanalysis data with monthly
temporal and 30 km spatial resolution. We use a reference period of
1981–2010. Reference evapotranspiration is directly provided by the
Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) model used in ERA5 by making a
second call to the surface energy balance scheme assuming that the
surface is well watered and changing its vegetation parameters to that of
agricultural land. We prefer the use of SPEI instead of Standardized
Precipitation Index (SPI; McKee et al., 1993), because SPEI is more
suitable for regions with high probability of zero-rainfall and considers
the difference between precipitation and reference evapotranspiration
(ETo). Thus, it provides a more reliable measure of drought severity
(Beguería et al., 2014). Soil moisture condition is assessed with the use
of the Soil Water Condition Index (SWCI), which is the normalization (z-
score) of the satellite-based Soil Water Index (SWI; Wagner et al., 1999)
provided by the Copernicus Global Land Service. The SWI is calculated
from surface soil moisture retrievals from Metop ASCAT sensors for
various soil depths using a two-layer water balance model. Thus, the
SWCI product is also provided at eight different soil depths by the Soil
Moisture Assessment Service of the AfriCultuRes project (AfriCRS-S6-
P03) (Alexandridis et al., 2021). Each depth is designated by the vari­
able T (possible values: 001, 005, 010, 015, 020, 040, 060, 100) that
describes the time water has to infiltrate the soil (Copernicus Global
Land Service-Product User Manual). For a given T value the soil depth
might differ according to the soil properties. We have chosen to use the
T = 040 values since it was found to present the highest correlation with
the other products (SPEI and VCI). The state of vegetation is indicated by
the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI; Kogan, 1995) and is available from
the Crop Condition Monitoring Service (AfriCRS-S2-P02). VCI provides
the deviation of the current NDVI from the minimum and maximum
values observed historically at the same location and is used to detect
agricultural drought and to measure the onset, intensity, duration, and
impact on vegetation (Liu and Kogan, 1996).
Complementary to the SPEI, SWCI and VCI indices, additional in­
formation can be obtained related to drought conditions. To be specific,
the precipitation anomaly for the previous month is calculated based on
the Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERGV06-L; Huff­
man et al., 2020) data and ERA5 reanalysis (Hersbach et al., 2020). In
addition, deterministic forecasts of locations with no precipitation
occurrence for the next seven days and daily probabilistic forecasts of
precipitation extremes assess the short-term evolution of drought con­
ditions. These forecasts utilize the National Centers for Environmental
Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System (GFS) and Global Ensemble
Forecast System (GEFS) (Toth and Kalnay, 1997; Wei et al., 2008).
2.2. Drought monitoring and early warning messages
The issuance of drought early warning messages is based on the
methodology of Sepulcre-Canto et al. (2012) and Cammalleri et al.,
(2021) which has been introduced by the European Drought Observa­
tory and is also used by the East Africa Drought Watch (EADW). The
system discussed here shares the same Early Warning concept however,
there are differences in the indicators and thresholds that are utilized to
issue the warning messages. Specifically, the proposed Combined
Drought Indicator over Africa (hereafter CDIa) is based on SPEI (1 or 3
month), SWCI and VCI values in order to account for the precipitation
shortage, soil moisture shortage and impact on vegetation condition
(Section 2.1). Therefore, the CDIa uses satellite data to monitor soil
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Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463
moisture, similar to the ECDI (Enenkel et al., 2016), and not a hydro­
logical model as in the original CDI. In our case, the satellite surface soil
moisture is also combined with a two-layer water balance model to
provide information for different soil depths. The warning messages,
their characteristics and the corresponding thresholds used are pre­
sented in Table 2. The CDIa is provided every 10 days (dekad) with
spatial resolution of 10 km.
The VCI threshold (VCI < 0.5), which is the basis of the most severe
“ALERT” message, was selected from the bibliography (Dutta et al.,
2015; Qian et al., 2016). We selected a threshold describing moderate
drought conditions to ensure that the CDIa will provide early enough
warning before a severe deterioration of vegetation occurs (e.g. VCI <
0.35). Initially, only the 3-month SPEI was used to describe precipitation
deficit since it covers the accumulated conditions over the crucial period
of the past three months. The SPEI and SWCI are both standardized in­
dicators and thus in the beginning, a threshold of one standard deviation
(-1) was selected to describe moderate drought. After initial testing of
the CDIa and analysis of the relations between the various indicators, it
was found that low SPEI3 and VCI values, close to their respective
thresholds, were frequent when the SWCI was way above the − 1
threshold and close to zero. Therefore, SWCI = 0 was selected as a
threshold. Finally, the SPEI3 threshold was fine-tuned from − 1 to − 0.85
since it enabled slightly better early warning without substantially
departing from the statistical and physical meaning of the widely used
− 1 standard deviation threshold. Finally, SPEI1 was also included, with
a more severe threshold, (-1.5), to account for cases in which consid­
erable drought over only the past month could have an impact on soil
moisture and/or vegetation condition. In essence, we have used a semi-
empirical approach initializing the thresholds of SPEI and SWCI based
on literature but revised them after testing the CDIa based on the
qualitative characteristics of drought evolution evolution (as seen in the
diagrams like Fig. 7) and also based on a more quantitative analysis
regarding the early warning ability of the CDIa (like the one described in
section 5).
The CDIa is provided for ten-day periods (dekads). For its construc­
tion for a specific dekad we use the most recently available data for each
index. This is the data of the previous dekad for the SWCI and VCI and
that of the previous month for the SPEIs. We have selected these time
steps for the indices after conducting a correlation analysis exploring
different time lags between all pairs of indices. This analysis was also
crucial in selecting the proper depth (T = 040) for SWCI. Correlation is
far from perfect, does not vary greatly with most timelags and spatially
can vary considerably over South Africa (see figures S1, S2, S3 in the
supplement. However, the analysis shows that using the most recently
available data ensures decent correlations between the indices and thus
Table 2
Types of warning messages used for the Combined Drought Indicator over Africa
(CDIa) and the corresponding thresholds of SPEI, SWCI and VCI indicators as
utilized in the Drought Monitoring and Early Warning (DM & EW) Service.
CDIa message Physical process Criteria for issuing the
(color) CDIa message
WATCH Precipitation deficit • SPEI3 < -0.85 OR
(yellow) SPEI1 < -1.5
• SWCI ≥ 0
• VCI ≥ 0.5
WARN (orange) Soil moisture deficit SPEI 3 < -0.85 OR SPEI
1 < -1.5 SWCI < 0 VCI ≥
0.5
ALERT (red) Vegetation stress • SPEI < -0.85 OR
SPEI1 < -1.5 OR
SWCI < 0
• VCI < 0.5
RECOVERY Precipitation and soil moisture back • SPEI3 ≥ -0.85
(magenta) to normal BUT vegetation is still • SPEI1 ≥ -1.5
stressed • SWCI ≥ 0
• VCI < 0.5
V. Pavlidis et al.
a proper description of the evolution of drought.
3. Performance of the drought monitoring and early warning
system
The core of the system, the CDIa, has been operational since April
2021. In order to test its performance a retrospective calculation of the
combined indicator was performed for the period 2017–2020. This
period exhibited some severe and prolonged drought events over the
area of interest, that is South Africa and Lesotho. It is characteristic that
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has
identified the years 2018–2022 as a drought disaster for the wider
Southern Africa region (Southern Africa: Drought - 2018-2022 -
Reliefweb).
Fig. 1 presents the evolution over time of all the CDIa messages over
the period 2017–2020 for the area of interest as a fraction of the overall
domain area.
According to the CDIa, several prolonged drought events are evident
over the 4-year period. Large parts of the domain are consistently
covered in warning messages while in several cases the majority of the
area is affected by drought. A common intra-annual pattern of drought
occurrence is seen; The most severe drought events are observed during
the latter half of each year (June-December), during the South African
winter to summer period. The summer period is the main rainfall season
for most of the central and eastern part of the country and lack of proper
rainfall can lead to drought. It is characteristic that during these months
the domain is almost entirely covered in warning messages for many
consecutive dekads. Moreover, the largest portion of these messages are
“ALERT” (red) indicating an extensive spatial impact on vegetation. The
area affected by drought usually declines during the first months of the
next year to increase again during the latter half.
Interestingly, the time evolution of the CDIa messages indicates an
early warning ability regarding the drought impact on vegetation.
Usually, in the preceding dekads, gradually increasing portions of the
domain start to present the early warning messages “WATCH” (yellow)
and “WARN” (orange) before the area fraction with the “ALERT” mes­
sages becomes dominant. A typical example of such behavior is the
drought happening in the latter half of 2019. However, there are cases
where the indicator fails to properly provide early warning before
vegetation is impacted. The overall early warning potential of the in­
dicator is discussed in section 5.
Fig. 1. Early Warning messages from 2017 to 2020 over South Africa. Yellow
for precipitation deficit, orange for soil moisture deficit, red for vegetation
affected by drought and magenta for recovery from drought conditions. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)
4
Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463
The performance of the CDIa over the entire South Africa and
Lesotho during a case of drought evolution can be seen in Fig. 2 for
consecutive dekads during the period May-August 2019. In May, most of
the western part of the domain is consistently covered by “ALERT”
messages. However, the Western Cape province at the southwest is
extensively covered in “RECOVERY” messages, indicating widespread
vegetation stress but no precipitation or soil moisture deficit. This period
is the rainy season for Western Cape and in this crucial period precipi­
tation below normal conditions (according to SPEIs) fails to improve
vegetation conditions and by July covers the province with “ALERTs”.
For the eastern part of the domain there is also an intensification of
drought but more gradual. Most of it starts in May without any signs of
drought. The May-August period is the dry season for this region and
lower than normal precipitation will result in lack of precipitation and
soil moisture warnings during July-August but will not impact vegeta­
tion, besides the northeastern part where vegetation was already in
moderate to low condition in May. However, the continuation of pre­
cipitation deficit well into the rainy season (November-February) leads
to clear vegetation impact all over the region. We focus with more de­
tails on this event in the case study over Free State province in section 4.
4. А case study
In this part, we focus on the performance of the CDIa in a particular
case study. We choose to depict the drought evolution over the Free
State province during 2019, especially focusing on the second half of the
year.
4.1. Description of the case study area
The Free State province is considered to be the food hub of South
Africa, with more than 90 % of its area being agricultural land, ac­
counting for 26.4 % and 15.9 % of the country’s field crops and animal
production, respectively. The province contributes 15 % of South Afri­
ca’s GDP, with over 7 000 farming units composed of both large-scale
commercial farms, as well as smallholder farming systems of both
crops and livestock. The major constraints and challenges for the agri­
cultural sector in Free State and South Africa at large are mainly water
availability, climate variability and associated extreme weather events
such as droughts. Therefore, Free State is of importance to both agri­
culture and livestock production since it contains large areas of crop­
lands and grasslands (Supplement Fig. 4).
4.2. Drought status assessment with Combined drought indicator for
Africa (CDIa)
The selected period represents a severe drought case that clearly
affected the entire country as well as the province of Free State ac­
cording to the bibliography (Abubakar et al., 2020) and several official
sources: the Global Drought Observatory has issued several severe
drought reports for 2019 (Drought Reports GDO) while a similar situa­
tion is presented by the Umlindi-the Watchman newletter (Umlindi-the
Watchman portal) and also a FAO GIEWS report issued at the start of
2019 (FAO GIEWS Update, 2019). Drought during 2019 was also present
according to hydrological data. Fig. 3 depicts ground water level data
anomalies from selected boreholes in the Free State province for the
period 2017–2020 (all boreholes depicted in Supplement Fig. 5, bore­
hole locations shown in Supplement Fig. 6) using as a reference the
mean of the entire period 2014–2020. Out of 33 boreholes, a large
number (10) depicts a considerable drop in ground water level
throughout entire 2019, usually as part of an overall decline over the
period 2018–2020 (Fig. 3-top row). Another larger portion (14) shows a
considerable drop during the first half of 2019 and usually after a brief
period of small recovery, a secondary drop during the last months of
2019 or the beginning of 2020 (Fig. 3-middle row). Finally, less than one
third of the stations (9) do not present considerably reduced
V. Pavlidis et al. Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463

Fig. 2. CDIa plots over SA and Lesotho for consecutive dekads indicating evolution of drought over the east part of the domain.

Fig. 3. Groundwater level from selected boreholes in Free State province for the period 2017–2020.

groundwater levels during 2019 or only a quite small decrease is
observed. (Fig. 3-bottom row). Thus, we can confidently describe 2019
as a period of considerable hydrological drought over Free State during
the examined period.
This period of severe drought is confirmed by the CDIa. In Fig. 4, we
present the spatial extent of CDIa messages over the Free State province
during 12 consecutive months, from May 2019 until April 2020 in order
to cover the entire year since there are significant cultivations during
both summer season (e.g. wheat, May-November) and winter season (e.
g. soybeans, October-May) in South Africa. Only the CDIa of the 1st
dekad of each month is presented. During May and June 2019, almost
the entire province is free of drought messages. In July, the first wide­
spread drought signs are seen, mainly warnings of precipitation deficit
(“WATCH”-yellow) while an area to the southwest has signs of vegeta­
tion stress (“ALERT”-red). The following two months, in August and
September, the entire province is now covered in CDI messages with soil
moisture deficit warnings (“WARN”-orange) spreading over the prov­
ince. In October of 2019 a considerable increase in area under vegeta­
tion stress is seen that culminates in the complete coverage of the
province during November and December. Finally, a recovery from

5
V. Pavlidis et al.
Fig. 4. Maps of CDIa messages over the Free State for the period May 2019-January 2020. Only the first dekad of each month is depicted.
vegetation stress is seen in the first month of 2020.
The evolution of this drought case study over Free State is also
evident in the sub-indicators used in the CDIa. The mean state of each
indicator over the province for each 10-day period during 2019 is
Fig. 5. Time evolution of the spatial average of the sub-indicators over Free
State during 2019.
6
Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463
presented in Fig. 5. All indicators start in 2019 by presenting signs of
considerable drought but in the following 2–3 months show a tendency
to recover and by April all of them have reverted back to normal con­
ditions. The rainy season for this region is summer (DJF) with the first
considerable rainfall happening in October and November while peak
rainfall is usually seen during December to February. Then it declines as
we move towards winter (JJA). As seen in SPEI-1, normal rainfall in
February and higher than normal in April are leading to this recovery
seen in soil moisture and vegetation conditions. However, a tendency
towards drought conditions is seen again in May, firstly in SPEI-1 with a
sudden drop followed by a continuous decline of its values that lasts
until August. During the last dekad of May both VCI and SWCI, triggered
by the precipitation deficit, start to decline and reach their minimum
values during November and December. SPEI-3 is not immediately
affected by the drop in SPEI-1 during May and it takes until two months,
in July of 2019, for SPEI-3 to considerably decline. Afterwards it con­
tinues to decline until November. Interestingly, vegetation condition
presents a steep drop towards drought-related stress during August and
September following a couple of months of strong precipitation deficit
according to both SPEIs and while soil moisture deficit is also estab­
lished (SWCI slips towards negative values). During the drought peak in
November all indicators depict strong drought conditions over the area.
A very similar drought evolution during 2019, regarding rainfall and
vegetation conditions, is also presented in the various Umlindi-the
Watchman reports issued in 2019 (Umlindi portal).
V. Pavlidis et al.
The severity of peak drought conditions over the province can be
clearly seen in Fig. 6 where the map of CDIa for the first dekad of
December 2019 is depicted alongside maps of all the indicators used for
its construction. It is characteristic that all indicators present strong
drought conditions. SPEI-1 and especially SPEI-3 values are usually well
below − 1 for most of the area. SWCI is quite small over the largest part
of the province and only a limited section in the centre-north presents
less severe conditions. Vegetation conditions show signs of severe stress
with VCI values being very low, below 0.2, over most of the area.
In order to examine the drought evolution specifically over crop­
lands, the land category we are mainly interested in, and at a more
localized level, we present in Fig. 7 the evolution of the CDIa messages
along with the sub-indicators over four selected grid cells over agricul­
tural land. These are representative of the various types of drought
evolution in all crop land grid cells over Free State. All the grid cells have
the same basic drought evolution pattern through 2019, similar to the
one seen in the evolution of the spatial average of the indicators (Fig. 5):
a start of the year with drought conditions followed by a recovery to
normal conditions during the second trimester and then a decline to­
wards drought that reaches its peak during the final months of the year.
This situation is clearly seen in the CDIa as all grid cells present warning
messages throughout the year except for a period around May to June-
July.
Focusing on the second part of 2019, we see some differences in the
pattern of drought evolution. Usually by June or July the CDIa starts to
present its first warning messages after a short no-drought period. For
most cropland grid points, there are several months of preceding
warning messages before vegetation gets impacted (“ALERT”-red) dur­
ing the end of the year (Fig. 7-top row). These are mainly warnings of
precipitation deficit (“WATCH”–yellow) due to both SPEIs presenting
quite low values (Fig. 7-top left). In some cases, the precipitation deficit
is followed by 1–2 months with warnings of soil moisture deficit
(“WARN”-orange) as the SWCI slips towards negative values (Fig. 7-top
right) further adding to the early warning potential before vegetation is
affected. In some cases, amidst the warnings of precipitation and soil
moisture deficit (Fig. 7-bottom left), we see an “ALERT” message (red)
due to a sudden drop in vegetation conditions in the beginning of
August. This lasts only for a dekad, since vegetation quickly recovers and
Fig. 6. Maps of the CDIa during the 1rst dekad of December 2019 and all the sub-indicators used in its construction.
7
Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463
the CDIa reverts to precipitation or soil moisture deficit warnings. Then,
in approximately a month, a larger sudden drop in vegetation conditions
is seen and vegetation remains stressed until the end of the year.
For the vast majority of cases during the latter half of 2019, as seen
from the examples above, drought evolution towards long term vege­
tation stress was gradual. Thus, the CDIa provided ample warning
messages of precipitation or soil moisture deficit before issuing the
continuous “ALERTs” by the final months of the year. In some limited
cases however, (Fig. 7-bottom right) the deterioration of vegetation
conditions was quite sudden after the initial decline of precipitation and
thus the establishment of vegetation stress was preceded by only a CDIa
precipitation deficit message in the previous dekad. Finally, there were
only a handful of cases, for which messages of vegetation stress by the
CDIa were not preceded at all by any warning regarding precipitation or
soil moisture deficit. Overall, out of the 203 grid cells with croplands
over the province, only three of them did not have either a “WATCH”
(yellow) or “WARN” (orange) warning before an “ALERT” was issued for
the first time after normal drought conditions (white), during the event
of interest (latter half of 2019). Very similar results are also seen over
grasslands, another land cover type of interest since it is used in cattle
grazing. Therefore, as a summary, we state that in this particular case
study the CDIa has showcased sufficient early warning ability regarding
the impact of drought on vegetation.
4.3. Comparison with another drought monitoring system
In this section we compare the CDIa with another drought moni­
toring system over South Africa which is the National Integrated Water
Information System (NIWIS) provided by the Department of Water and
Sanitation. The NIWIS system provides a wide range of information
ranging from water quality and groundwater levels to river flows and
surface water storage. It also includes a drought status overview which
assesses the drought conditions on a province level. For each province
drought information is provided regarding the status of groundwater,
dams, runoff, rainfall and vegetation conditions. Moreover, the overall
drought status is derived by the combination of all the above informa­
tion on a monthly basis. It is provided by a single indicator that can take
values ranging from 0 to 6 that correspond to five different drought
V. Pavlidis et al. Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463

Fig. 7. The evolution of the CDIa messages along with all the sub-indicators over four selected grid cells above agricultural land for the year 2019.

status categories, ranging from extreme drought to very wet conditions

(Table 3). It is a system that mainly focuses on water availability related
to drought (dams, groundwater, runoff) but also includes rainfall and
vegetation conditions. Thus, a comparison of its results with the CDIa,
even from a qualitative perspective, can provide useful information
about the performance of our system.
In Fig. 8 we present the CDIa messages for 2017–2020 over Free State
province (as seen also in Fig. 1) but also include the NIWIS drought
status (blue line). Overall, there is an agreement of drought status be­
tween the two systems. It is evident that during this period all large
drought events captured by the two systems are relatively well collo­
cated (e.g. 2nd half of 2017, end of 2018 and 2019 etc). Moreover,
during the most intense drought events of the NIWIS system the CDIa
presents also the most intense drought status with the largest portion of
the Free State covered in ALERT messages (e.g. end of 2017). However,
the CDIa seems to produce several warning messages before these large
drought events during times when the NIWIS status does not indicate
any drought. A typical example is the latter half of 2019. Before the
drought peak intensity at the end of the year, captured by both systems,
the CDIa covers almost the entire province with precipitation deficit Fig. 8. CDIa warning messages 2017–2020 over Free State province (bars-left
(yellow) and soil moisture deficit (orange) messages for around three axis) as an area fraction of the entire province along with the NIWIS drought
months, while the NIWIS covers the region with wet and no drought status (blue line-right axis) and the CDIa numerical drought status (green line-
conditions. The same situation can be also seen for the years 2018 and right axis). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend,
the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
2020 where the CDIa produces for the months before the drought peak

several drought related messages for a considerable portion of the

Table 3 province, while the NIWIS system shows no drought conditions. Such
Drought status numerical values for the NIWIS system (left) and the CDIa (right). behavior is somewhat expected since the CDIa is designed to clearly
NIWIS drought status CDIa drought status capture even the very beginnings of drought, such as precipitation
Category Value Category Value deficit and soil moisture deficit in relatively shallow soil depths, whereas
the NIWIS system is more focused on water availability that usually
very wet 5< x≤6 RECOVERY 3
wet 4< x≤5 Normal 3
becomes a problem in latter stages of drought. Therefore, it seems that if
no drought 3< x≤4 WATCH 2 used in conjunction with the NIWIS system, the CDIa could provide
moderate 2< x≤3 WARN 1 enhanced early warning before major drought events that can severely
severe 1< x≤2 ALERT 0 impact water availability. Thus, it could also assist in the early warning
extreme 0< x≤1
of hydrological drought for national purposes. We envision the CDIa as a

8
V. Pavlidis et al.
unique indicator, separate from the NIWIS, mainly addressing the
problem of agricultural drought to a detailed spatial resolution, some­
thing unattainable with the NIWIS since it is mainly focuses on hydro­
logical drought provides information only per province.
In order to better illustrate the aforementioned point, we proceed to
a more suitable comparison of the two systems by also calculating a
numerical drought status for the CDIa per month on a province level. We
assign numbers to the different CDIa message categories on a scale from
0 to 3 as seen in Table 3, following the same principles as with the NIWIS
system: lowest number for the most severe drought status and increasing
numbers as the drought becomes less severe. Then, the CDIa average of
all grid cells over a specific province is calculated firstly for each 10-day
period and then for each month, for direct comparison with the NIWIS
indicator. What is important to notice is that by this CDIa scaling, both
systems designate a drought situation for numbers below 3. What we are
interested in is whether the two systems agree on designating a partic­
ular event as drought or not. Apart from this simple qualitative com­
parison of binary nature (“drought” or “no-drought”) there is not much
point in a more direct quantitative comparison of the two systems, since
the various drought status categories represent quite different
components.
When both systems are seen as numerical drought status timeseries
(Fig. 8-green line for CDIa), it is again quite evident that both agree well
on the timing of the most severe drought peaks. Moreover, it is even
clearer that the CDIa starts producing drought warning messages
considerably earlier than NIWIS, usually preceding it by 1, 2 or even
several months ahead (e.g. latter half of 2018). Thus, affirming its ability
to produce early warning messages before severe drought events occur.
Finally, the overall correlation between the two time series is quite
strong with the Pearson correlation coefficient being equal to 0.78 (R2 =
0.6). This indicates that the two systems tend to closely agree on the
direction the drought status is changing over the region for a given
moment.
5. CDIa assessment as an early warning system
In this section we assess the ability of the CDIa to act as an early
warning system not on a specific case study but over the entire domain
and during the entire period 2017–2020. As mentioned before, we are
especially interested in providing sufficient warning messages before
vegetation is affected by drought, since our final aim is food security.
Thus, ideally during drought evolution before the first time emergence
of an “ALERT” message (indicating vegetation is affected by drought)
the CDIa should provide some sort of warning message for at least the
preceding dekad. In order to estimate the early warning potential of the
system we have selected the cases when CDIa changed to an “ALERT”
message from a less severe condition (including no drought and recovery
messages) and analyzed what kind of messages are present before
vegetation becomes affected by drought. This was done for the entire
domain as well as for two specific land use categories of interest: crop­
lands (around 5 % of the domain) and grasslands (around 46 % of the
domain). This decomposition of preceding messages can be seen in
Table 4.
Table 4
CDIa messages preceding the emergence of “ALERT” warnings (columns 2–5). Last two columns (6–7): The early warning ability of the CDIa depending on the
preceding warnings considered. For the period 2017–2020 and the entire domain.
Ratio of Preceding messages (%)
No “WATCH” “WARN” ‘RECOVERY”
Drought (precipitation (soil moisture (no drought but vegetation is
deficit) deficit) impacted)
Entire 23 % 27 % 26 % 24 %
Domain
Crop 13 % 32 % 27 % 28 %
Grass 20 % 31 % 26 % 23 %
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Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463
Overall, results are similar for the domain and the two land use
categories examined, with the early warning ability of the CDIa over the
latter being moderately improved, especially over croplands. Over
croplands, only a small amount of “ALERTs” (13 %) appears suddenly
without the CDIa providing any kind of preceding warning message.
This percentage is considerably larger over grasslands and the entire
domain. Flash droughts could play a significant role in such abrupt
events when vegetation undergoes certain delicate stages of develop­
mental cycle.
Focusing on croplands, a considerable number of emerging
“ALERTs” (59 %) is preceded either by precipitation deficit (“WATCH”
− 32 %) or by soil moisture deficit (“WARN”-27 %) warning messages,
which are essentially the warning messages to be expected when
drought is evolving.
A larger percentage of “WATCH”+”WARN” preceding warnings is
inhibited by vegetation already being in low condition before an
“ALERT” is issued: a fair number of emerging “ALERTs” is preceded by
“RECOVERY” messages (28 %). This indicates that even though there is
no precipitation or soil moisture related drought, vegetation is not in
good shape and could potentially deteriorate even further if drought
conditions worsen. Thus, the “RECOVERY” message besides describing
the phase out of drought, plays also a subtle but clear warning role. This
message is particularly important during successive drought events
occurring in short increments of time. In such cases, the vegetation that
has been impacted by a previous drought does not have enough time to
completely recover before the next event takes place. Such conditions
were in fact present for the most part of the 2017–2020 period examined
over the domain (Fig. 1). Therefore, if we also consider the “RECOVERY”
message as an indirect warning, then the 87 % of emerging “ALERTs”
over croplands present some sort of preceding warning (“WATCH”,
“WARN” or “RECOVERY”).
However, if vegetation is not affected by a previous drought event
and a new drought evolves from normal vegetation conditions then the
vast majority of emerging “ALERTs”, around 80 %, are preceded by
“WATCH” and “WARN” warnings (From Table 4: WATCH + WARN
preceding messages divided by the sum of NoDrought + WATCH +
WARN preceding messages). This was clearly seen in the case study over
Free State in Section 4.2.
The early warning ability of the system can be influenced by two
other factors. First, vegetation conditions can deteriorate due to factors
unrelated to drought, such as plant disease. If such events are coupled
with a small drop of SPEI or SWCI below thresholds, this could issue
“ALERTs” without previous warnings. Second, we have selected a mild
drought threshold of VCI (0.5) for the “ALERT” messages, in order to
provide warnings before vegetation conditions become severely
affected. This makes it harder for the other indices (SPEI-1 & 3, SWCI) to
always anticipate a mild decrease in vegetation condition.
6. Discussion
The presented CDIa is a useful tool to monitor drought status. It is
based on the methodology of a well-established system and it employs
sub-indicators that are widely in use (SPEI, VCI, SWCI) and cover three
Early Warning Ability (%) Early Warning Ability
(preceding “WATCH” (%)
+”WARN”) (preceding
“WATCH”+”WARN”+
”RECOVERY”)
53 % 77 %
59 % 87 %
56 % 80 %
V. Pavlidis et al.
main aspects of drought impact in the natural system: precipitation, soil
moisture and vegetation. Moreover, we showed that the CDIa does
capture the large drought events over the region, like the strong 2019
drought captured by the borehole groundwater observations (Fig. 3), as
well as in another established drought monitoring system like the NIWIS
that is already in operational use. Even though the two systems have
somewhat different aims, their close matching regarding large drought
events is encouraging for the usefulness of the CDIa.
We also contend that the CDIa is quite useful as an early warning
system. The main goal of the CDIa system is to provide warnings before
vegetation is affected by drought, especially over croplands and grass­
lands, since the final aim is food security. We have shown in Section 5
that indeed most of the drought impacts on vegetation do have a pre­
ceding warning, especially when the warning potential of the “RE­
COVERY” message is also considered. Also, in the 2019 drought event
case study described in section 4.2 the vast majority of cases over these
two land use categories provided warnings (either “WATCH” or
“WARN”) that preceded vegetation impact by several dekads. This can
give essential time for actions to be taken (such as increased irrigation -
if possible) to prepare for the upcoming drought. The temporal resolu­
tion of the CDIa, issued for 10-day periods, is also helpful to provide
frequently updated information of the drought status.
The spatial resolution of the CDIa, 10 km, is sufficient for describing
drought status on a subregional level. Being able to identify any sub­
stantial differences in drought status over such scales can be helpful to
several stakeholders (national water and agriculture services, insurance
entities, etc.) and also to farmers interested in the overall drought status
in the wider location around their field. However, it cannot give highly
personalized information for very small scale-fields.
The CDIa is part of the wider AfriCultuReS services. Many of these
services can complement its ability to drought monitoring and early
warning and alleviate any limitations the indicator has. For example, if
there is a need for a more localized monitoring of drought impacts on
vegetation, there is a Crop Monitoring service at higher resolution. This
service has many products (Crop early warning, Crop condition moni­
toring, etc.) with resolutions that go as high as 20 m and can be useful to
identify drought impacts on specific small-scale fields. Perfectly com­
plementing the short-term early warning aspect of the CDIa, the fore­
casting of the Weather Forecasting Services in the project provide
precipitation estimation for the upcoming week and more specialized
information, such as forecasting of temperature extremes and estimation
of locations with no precipitation amount for the next 7 days (Table 1).
Another example is the need for longer term drought warning, regarding
the entire crop season, something that the CDIa cannot provide. For such
purposes the Seasonal Drought Forecast (S3-P01) in the AfriCultuReS
project provides vital information of probabilistic drought conditions of
up to six months ahead. This service uses the ECMWF seasonal forecasts
to compute potential evapotranspiration and the SPEI index. It perfectly
complements the DM & EW service to provide a complete set of drought
warnings for various timescales.
The use of the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration
Index (SPEI) in the CDIa for describing precipitation deficit is an
excellent choice since besides precipitation it incorporates the effect of
evapotranspiration and as an extent temperature, a variable that can
play a significant role in drought evolution. Moreover, the use of
different accumulation periods (3 and 1 month) in SPEI helps to better
capture the various time scales of drought evolution. The role of SPEI
accumulation periods in foreshadowing soil water and vegetation defi­
ciency is key in diagnosing drought events at early stages. We intend to
further examine it and, in the future, possibly even incorporate addi­
tional SPEI accumulation periods in the CDIa.
Concerning the methodology followed, it is relatively easy to
implement and flexible to upgrade or diversify according to user needs.
Initial implementation is straightforward, the only prerequisite is the
availability of data that cover the different aspects of drought impact (e.
g. precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation) and that can be used in a
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Climate Services 34 (2024) 100463
near-real time operational mode. Available products like satellite data
with global coverage and reanalysis datasets, like these exploited in the
context of this study, can readily be used. The thresholds of the various
sub-indicators can be initially selected according to bibliography or by
using simple rules like one standard deviation for standardized indices.
Thus, such a DM & EW system can be constructed in a short time, while
the room for further improvements and calibration to user needs is
ample: more complex methods for threshold refinement, additional sub-
indicators, additional indicator messages or diversification of the
existing ones to name a few. Such flexibility can easily modify the in­
dicator to cover different needs. For example, one could construct a
combined indicator that would be better able to describe water avail­
ability related to drought (e.g. the goal of the NIWIS system) by just
replacing the vegetation condition index in the “ALERT” message with a
soil moisture index that captures larger soil depths (e.g. SCWI for a
deeper depth). It is evident that the CDI methodology offers a solid basis
for flexible construction of drought monitoring and early warning
systems.
7. Conclusions
This study presents a drought monitoring and early warning system
developed within the context of the AfriCultuReS project. The system
uses a drought indicator, CDIa, that combines different sub-indicators
based on the methodology of the CDI issued by the European Drought
Observatory.
We presented the performance of the system over South Africa and
Lesotho during the period 2017–2020, during a strong drought event in
2019 over the Free State province, an area with extensive croplands. The
CDIa produced extensive warning messages during the entire
2017–2020 period and presented close matching with the NIWIS
drought monitoring system that is provided by the Department of Water
and Sanitation. The sub-indicators used in the CDIa presented close
correlation during these events indicating that they are good candidates
for an operational system. Moreover, the CDIa presented a considerable
ability to provide early warning before vegetation is affected by major
drought events. During the evolution of the 2019 drought over Free
State over croplands and grasslands, the main land categories on focus,
the appearance of a vegetation impact warning was preceded by at least
one warning regarding either precipitation or soil moisture deficit.
Finally, we contend that the methodology of the CDI used here is
extremely useful since it is easy to implement over different domains and
flexible to improve and diversify for capturing the needs of various end
users.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Vasileios Pavlidis: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investiga­
tion, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. Mahlatse Kganyago: Resources, Visuali­
zation, Writing – review & editing. Mxolisi Mukhawana: Resources,
Writing – review & editing. Thomas Alexandridis: Resources, Writing –
review & editing. Ines Cherif: Resources, Writing – review & editing.
Giovanni Laneve: Resources, Writing – review & editing. Riccardo
Orsi: Resources, Writing – review & editing. Stergios Kartsios: Writing
– original draft, Writing – review & editing. Maria Chara Karypidou:
Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Sofiadis Ioannis:
Writing – review & editing. Eleni Katragkou: Conceptualization, Su­
pervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
V. Pavlidis et al.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
Research in this article is part of the AfriCultuReS project “Enhancing
Food Security in African Agricultural Systems with the Support of
Remote Sensing”, which received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme under
grant agreement No. 774652. We acknowledge the AUTH IT Center and
Aristotelis HPC for providing computational resources. We also
acknowledge the Department of Water and Sanitation in South Africa for
providing data of the National Integrated Water Information System.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.cliser.2024.100463.
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NIWIS Drought portal, https://www.dws.gov.za/niwis2/StateofWater/DroughtStatus
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SAWS South African Weather Services Drought Bulletin, https://www.weathersa.co.za
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