Abstract
The increasing frequency and severity of global droughts present critical challenges to agriculture and climate resource management, highlighting the need for comprehensive drought data. To address this, we introduce the Near-global Agro-Climatological Drought Monitoring (NEC-DROMO) dataset, which integrates key agro-climatological variables to provide robust drought insights. Spanning 2002-2021 at a 0.25-degree spatial resolution and monthly scale, NEC-DROMO combines soil moisture (SM) and vegetation water content (VWC) to capture agricultural stress, with rainfall and temperature for climatological context. NEC-DROMO delivers monthly drought data for near-global regions, with latency depending on the availability of input datasets. NEC-DROMO is built through Principal Component Analysis, which objectively weights each variable, ensuring robustness for historical monitoring and potential near-real-time applications. Validation against independent satellite-based and in-situ methods, including the SPI, NDVI, and Geocoded Disaster dataset, confirms NEC-DROMO's reliability in accurately capturing global drought patterns. Building upon the ECoHydrological Land Reanalysis dataset and using its VWC, SM, and temperature data, NEC-DROMO represents a significant advancement in global drought monitoring, supporting policymaking and disaster risk assessment.