3.26 ONE MEASURE OF DROUGHT

Data ID

Description:

Drought, as indicated by low rainfall totals expected once every 14 years

Chapter:

3 Climate

File name:

One measure of drought

File type:

ArcView shapefile

Geographical area:

Namibia

Keywords:

rainfall

drought

Notes on data, analysis and

Drought, as calculated on the basis that rainfall totals in 13 out of 14 years are normal, while only those that are so low

compilation:

that they occur on average once in 14 years are droughts. This approach requires that a threshold be calculated between

those totals expected in 13 of the 14 years, and those that can be expected only once in 14 years. This map shows these

thresholds, which are limited to rainfall totals between October and March because the significant rain over most of the

country falls during those summer months.

This shapefile was created from the Arcview grid file. This grid file was created from data for almost 300 stations and

came from the following report:

Namibia Resource Consultants. 1999. Rainfall distribution in Namibia: Data analysis and mapping of spatial, temporal,

and Southern Oscillation Index aspects. Windhoek: Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development. See Fig 3.18 Average and

Median annual rainfall for source data.

Data quality and organization

Positional Accuracy:

Created from a grid interpolated from points - accuracy will be reasonable in areas with clusters of stations and low in

areas with few stations

Vector/Raster:

Vector

Spatial reference

Projection:

Geographic

Fields

Field name

Field description

CLASS

Rainfall, in 50 mm intervals

VALUE

Numerical rank of classes

Source/Distribution

Data Source:

Namibia Resource Consultants. 1999. Rainfall distribution in Namibia: Data analysis and mapping of spatial, temporal,

and Southern Oscillation Index aspects. Windhoek: Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development.

Distribution notes:

Unrestricted