A dynamic approach for assessing climate change impacts on drought: an analysis in Southern Italy

ABSTRACT Drought is often monitored through standardized indices. However, while enabling comparisons across different climatic regions, standardization poses an issue when using indices to assess future climate change impacts on drought, since they have a null average by definition. To address this issue, in this study we introduce a dynamic approach where future changes are assessed by computing climate normals using moving time windows. The approach is applied to Sicily and Calabria (Southern Italy) using the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and the standardized precipitation–evapotranspiration index (SPEI), and considering climate change scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. An optimized ensemble weighted average (OEWA) of climate models is introduced to reduce model biases. The results indicate that the region is likely to experience an increase in drought events due to climate change. The findings highlight the need for revised drought identification strategies that account for non-stationarity in climate.