The termination phase is an important and underappreciated component of drought. There are noteworthy examples of disruptive drought termination events from every continent, and interest has piqued in recent years following exceptional events in the UK (2012) and California (2016-17). Despite their significance, and partly owing to their complexity, various subjective definitions have emerged. This has been an obstacle to the systematic identification and characterisation of drought termination. Yet, without such catalogues it is difficult to analyse drivers and variability, or to develop approaches for forecasting based on historical precedence.
The goals of this thesis are to: (1) develop an objective procedure for identifying and characterising drought termination; (2) derive systematic chronologies of historical drought termination in river flow and groundwater level records in the UK; (3) understand the physical characteristics and processes of drought termination in the UK; and (4) explore approaches for forecasting the end of drought that capitalise on historical chronologies of drought termination. [Continues.]