A Drought Dataset Based on a Composite Index for the Sahelian Climate Zone of Niger

Agricultural drought monitoring in Niger is relevant for the implementation of effective early warning systems and for improving climate change adaptation strategies. However, the scarcity of in situ data hampers an efficient analysis of drought in the country. The present dataset was created for agricultural drought characterization in the Sahelian climate zone of Niger. The dataset comprises the three-month scale and monthly time series of a composite drought index (CDI) and their corresponding drought classes at a spatial resolution of 1 km2 for the period 2000–2020. The CDI was generated from remote sensing data, namely CHIRPS (Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). A weighing technique combining entropy and Euclidian distance was applied in the CDI derivation. From the present dataset, the extraction of the CDI time series can be performed for any location of the study area using its geographic coordinates. Therefore, seasonal drought characteristics, such as onset, end, duration, severity and frequency can be computed from the CDI time series using the theory of runs. The availability of the present dataset is relevant for the socio-economic assessment of drought impacts at small spatial scales, such as district and household level. This dataset is also important for the assessment of drought characteristics in remote areas or areas inaccessible due to civil insecurity in the country as it was entirely generated from remote sensing data. Finally, by including temperature data, the dataset enables drought modelling under global warming.