Meteorological Drought Occurrence in Slovakia

Slovakia is located in the Central Europe, and its complex surface consists of mountains, valleys, but also lowlands, which are crucial for agricultural production. In the neighbouring countries, especially in Hungary and the Czech Republic, there has been paid great attention to drought occurrence for a longer time. In Slovakia, hydrological drought assessment was more often under investigation than the meteorological aspect of the drought in the past. The regionally developed methods were primarily used for its estimation, while the internationally established indicators were rarely applied. In the last years, the drought became to be discussed more frequently in the Slovak climatology, which led to the start of operational drought monitoring in Slovakia in 2015. Drought periods, which occurred in the last years and caused also yield losses in agriculture, raised the interest of the public and experts from different economic sectors in this phenomenon. The intersectoral approach seems to be the crucial way of further drought research.

This chapter aims to present two case studies, which could be the example of the linkage between climatological and hydrological approach in drought assessment on an operational level. The first case study describes the operational meteorological drought monitoring, which has run since 2015. The slightly modified methodology of widely known indices (SPI and SPEI) shows promising results, which can be obtained on a daily basis. It enables them to be used in intersectoral drought analysis. The example of such analysis is presented in the second case study, in which the linkage between meteorological and hydrological drought was examined. The knowledge about the causalities between these two drought types brings higher assumption for the successful design of effective integrated drought monitoring.