Review PaperDrought characterization from a multivariate perspective: A review

- This paper presents a comprehensive review of multivariate drought indices.
- Discussions of different development methods are provided.
- Suggestions are made for implementing different multivariate drought indices.

SummaryDrought is a recurring natural phenomenon that has plagued the civilization throughout its history. Due to the complex nature and widespread impacts of drought, there is a lack of universally accepted definition of drought, which also affects the development of drought indices to characterize drought conditions. Because an individual drought indicator is generally not sufficient for characterizing complex drought conditions and impacts, multiple drought-related variables and indices are required to capture different aspects of complicated drought conditions. To address this issue, a variety of multivariate drought indices have been developed recently to combine multiple drought-related variables and indices for integrated drought characterizations. This paper presents a comprehensive review of major multivariate drought indices developed recently. Different development methods of multivariate drought indices are introduced along with their strengths and limitations. This paper provides useful information for operational drought characterization with current multivariate drought indices and for the development of new multivariate drought indices.