Revealing the spatio-temporal characteristics of drought in Mozambique and their relationship with large-scale climate variability Araneda Cabrera, Ronnie J. Bermúdez Pita, María Puertas, Jerónimo Droughts Standardised Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) Regionalization Trend Persistence Teleconnections Climatic indices Ronnie Araneda gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Regional Government of Galicia (Xunta de Galicia) and the European Union through the Predoctoral Grant reference ED481A-2018/162. Maria Bermudez was supported by the European Union H2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 754446 and the Research and Transfer Fund of the University of Granada-Athenea3i. The authors would like to thank Manuel Alvarez and Victor Penas for their comments and support during the development of the study. Study region: Mozambique. Study focus: Mozambique does not currently have the necessary tools for systematic monitoring and forecasting of drought at a subnational scale. The purpose of this study was to characterize drought conditions and trends throughout the country and to evaluate the influence of major climatic drivers on drought events (period 1950–2019). Drought conditions were studied by means of the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and run theory. The principal component analysis technique and the k-means clustering method were applied for defining homogenous drought regions. The Mann-Kendall trend test and Rescaled Range statistical analysis were used for defining the temporal characteristics of drought. The cross-correlation method, a spectral analysis based on the Fast Fourier Transform and a cross-wavelet analysis, were used to identify possible climate drivers. The results are ultimately intended to contribute to the development of a drought monitoring system in this country. New hydrological insights for the region: Three homogeneous drought regions can be defined in Mozambique. The South and Centre regions showed more intense and severe drought events. In all regions, a significant trend towards a higher incidence of droughts and long-term a persistence were found. El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Darwin Sea Level Pressure anomalies were identified as significant drivers of drought variability, especially in the southern regions. These climate indices can be used as predictors in drought forecasting models. 2021-11-22T08:04:46Z 2021-11-22T08:04:46Z 2021-10-19 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Ronnie J. Araneda-Cabrera, María Bermudez, Jerónimo Puertas, Revealing the spatio-temporal characteristics of drought in Mozambique and their relationship with large-scale climate variability, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, Volume 38, 2021, 100938, ISSN 2214-5818, [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2021.100938] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/71651 10.1016/j.ejrh.2021.100938 eng info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/754446 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España Elsevier