Evaluating vegetation-deficit forecasts and satellite-based onset warnings in drylands: analytical inputs and verification code

Analytical inputs, model-fitting code and saved predictions for vegetation-deficit forecasting and satellite-defined onset-warning evaluation in four dryland windows. Fixed-native-cell MODIS observations support comparisons against local five-year and persistence baselines. The package includes annual refitting, geographical transfer, five LSTM initialisations, local recalibration, weighting, geographical/year resampling and onset-rule sensitivity analyses. The README files specify executable verification steps and the scope of fitting reproduction. Additional sensitivities followed inspection of earlier test results and are exploratory. Original code is licensed under MIT; authors' derived tables and documentation under CC BY 4.0, with source-product attribution and third-party rights retained. This version adds an exploratory ridge model fitted directly to departures from the issue-available local five-year baseline, with matched observations, development choices, fitted models and verification of the original predictions. The existing input and verification archives are unchanged.