Records in the live release
74,610
Release 2026-11-12, 12 November 2026. Its fingerprint: 0ab2ee6a5125ba0092f92281e70ce0744ad5a0fa09ff7871ae8ff96c011b8734 (what that is).
Datasets·UM-034·Water·Early access
Drought monitor by ward and municipality
Is it drier than usual where you are? A drought score for every ward and municipality, each month, from rain, evaporation and how green the land is. Our estimate, not an official drought declaration.
01
What it holds
In more detail
Each month's drought index and class (none, dry, moderate, severe, extreme) for every 2026 ward (from 2015), municipality, district and province (from 1951), from rain against normal over 3 and 12 months (our SPI from Copernicus ERA5-Land), rain less evaporation (ERA5-Drought's SPEI) and greenness against normal (Digital Earth Africa, from 2017). Modelled and measured, not an official declaration.
How far it reaches
74,610 records: every 2026 ward (monthly from 2015) and municipality, district and province (from 1951), to 2026-10.
How often it changes
Monthly
Monthly: ERA5-Drought publishes a month within days of its end (the intermediate dataset, consolidated later); greenness a few weeks after.
Where the figures come from
Copernicus Climate Change Service; Digital Earth Africa.
02
Measured accuracy
Not checked against a source page: its records cite no page-level facts. 50 records sampled on 12 November 2026. The sample and any failures.
03
Get it
On this site
See the drought monitor, free, no account.
Through the API
/v1/datasets/drought-index/records, as JSON, CSV or Excel, with filters and any past date. Fields and filters. It takes a key.
All of it at once (Parquet)
Being built. The list.
For data portals
Described in DCAT in /catalog.json and on this page.
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