Supplementary material to "Mount Pinatubo’s effect on the moisture-based drivers of plant productivity"

Informa0on S1.0 Reference period selectionThe requirement of a baseline time selection points towards a precise representation of climate conditions over a historical period, especially towards the later part of the 20th century, and sufficiently long enough for the calibration of drought indices.Figure S1 compares seasonal surface temperature responses in 1992 with respect to three selected base climate periods.It clearly shows that seasonal surface temperature is considerably influenced by the dominance of no anthropogenic forcing period (1850-2014 and 1920-1960).Consideration of the entire historical (1850-2014) and volcanically quiescent time-slice as a base period result in the biasing of the reference climate towards the non-anthropogenic emission era.Consequently, the volcano-induced signal due to the Mt.Pinatubo eruption gets muted by the response due to anthropogenic forcings.This influence is minimal with respect to the base period of 1950-2014, as this period mostly covers the period of anthropogenic signal emergence, and its length is sufficient for calibration statistics for SMDI and ETDI (As shown in Figure S1).