The evaporative demand drought index. Part II: CONUS-wide assessment against common drought indicators

Two main advantages of EDDI over other drought indices are that it is independent of precipitation (similar to ESI) and it can be decomposed to identify the role individual evaporative drivers have on drought onset and persistence. At short time scales, spatial distributions and time series results illustrate that EDDI often indicates drought onset well in advance of the USDM, SPI, and SSI. Results illustrate the benefits of physically based evaporative demand estimates and demonstrate EDDI's utility and effectiveness in an easy-to-implement agricultural early warning and long-term hydrologic drought–monitoring tool with potential applications in seasonal forecasting and fire-weather monitoring.