Analysis of the severe drought in Ireland in 2018

The summer of 2018 brought a significant meteorological drought to Ireland, with the 25 th of June marking the first official day of drought after a cold winter/spring.Meteorological data recorded at Met Éireann's (the Irish Meteorological Service) network of stations were used to calculate the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI), the Percent of Normal Index (PNI) and the Soil Moisture Deficit (SMD).In addition, MODIS remote sensing data from NASA's TERRA satellite was used to compute the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI).The progress of the drought in 2018 has been shown by applying an ordinary kriging interpolation to meteorological observations to estimate the national coverage of drought indices at a monthly scale.According to the 2018 SMD analysis, parts of Ireland recorded their worst drought event on record when compared to the long-term average period of 1981-2010.The SPI and PNI illustrate that whilst the months of January and April were very wet, all subsequent months until September had low rainfall amounts.The SMD indicates drier values during May and June, reaching a maximum value of 94.3 mm on the 14 th of July.The greatest difference between EVI in 2018 and the average EVI over a long-term period (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017) occurred during the