ABSTRACT
Drought termination, defined generally as the end of drought conditions, has been relatively neglected in the scientific literature. This is despite the fact that droughts tend to end abruptly (Dettinger 2013), frequently causing significant disruption (e.g. Parry et al. 2013). However, the frequency of abrupt drought terminations may be overestimated, perhaps because they are more dramatic and newsworthy than a gradual return to ‘normal conditions’. The terminal phase is also the point during a drought when water resources are most stretched, and when information on the likelihood of termination would be most welcome. A more comprehensive understanding of drought termination would improve our knowledge of its physical processes and represents a potentially important contribution to drought monitoring and forecasting activities.
