The first global multi-timescale daily SPEI dataset from 1982 to 2021

Abstract Global warming accelerates water cycle, causing more droughts globally that challenge monitoring and forecasting. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is used to assess drought characteristics and response time of natural and economic systems at various timescales. However, existing SPEI datasets have coarse spatial or temporal resolution or limited spatial extent, restricting their ability to accurately identify the start or end dates or the extent of drought at the global scale. To narrow these gaps, we developed a global daily SPEI dataset (SPEI-GD), with a 0.25° spatial resolution from 1982 to 2021 at multiple timescales (5, 30, 90, 180 and 360 days), based on the precipitation from European Center for Medium Weather Forecasting Reanalysis V5 (ERA5) dataset and the potential evapotranspiration from Singer’s dataset. Compared to widely used SPEIbase dataset, the SPEI-GD can improve the spatial-temporal resolution and the accuracy of SPEI in areas where meteorological sites are lacking. The SPEI-GD significantly correlates with site-based SPEI and soil moisture. Our dataset solidly supports sub-seasonal and daily-scale global and regional drought research.