Dataset from: Assessing the Role of Tropical Cyclones on Drought Characteristics in the Hurricane Region of the Americas between 1983 and 2024

README: Dataset from: Assessing the Role of Tropical Cyclones on Drought Characteristics in the Hurricane Region of the Americas between 1983 and 2024 This file describes the netCDF files used in Herrera et al. (2025): On the Interaction of Drought and Tropical Cyclones in the Hurricane Region of the Americas. (NetCDF) stands for Network Common Data Form, which is a standardized data format commonly used for sharing data in the Geosciences. Our files are written in netCDF version 4 (netCDF4), and they can be read in common programming languages such as Python, Matlab, R, NCL, C++, and others. The datasets span from 1984-01-01 to 2023-12-31, and include the drought indices files supporting this work. Such indices are the Standardized Precipitation minus Evaporation Index (SPEI; Vicente-Serrano, et al. 2010), the “self-calibrated” Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI; Palmer, 1965; Wells et al., 2004). File variables: Each drought metric netCDF file includes the following variables: [0] time [1] latitude [2] longitude [3] climate_variable time: A list of monthly values presented in days since January 1st 1984 at 00:00:00. For example, January of 1950 is therefore 365, February of 1950 is 396, and so on. latitude: A list of latitude values presented in degrees North. longitude: A list of longitude values presented in degrees West. climate_variable: variables include the drought metrics and precipitation used in this work (unitless and in mm/month). The variables are 'precip' or '__xarray_dataarray_variable__' References: 1. McKee, T.B., Doesken, N.J. and Kleist, J. (1993), January. The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Applied Climatology (Vol. 17, No. 22, pp. 179-183). 2. Palmer, W.C. (1965). Meteorological drought (Vol. 30). US Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau. 3. Vicente-Serrano, S.M., Beguería, S. and López-Moreno, J.I. (2010). A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. Journal of Climate, 23(7), pp.1696-1718. 4. Wells, N., Goddard, S. and Hayes, M.J., (2004). A self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index. Journal of Climate, 17(12), pp.2335-2351. Related Publication: Please also cite the following related publication: Herrera et al. (2025). On the Interaction of Drought and Tropical Cyclones in the Hurricane Region of the Americas. For further questions and clarifications, please contact: Dimitris A. Herrera ([e-mail])