water Article Long-Term Spatiotemporal Variation of Droughts in the Amazon River Basin Franklin Paredes-Trejo 1,2,* , Humberto Alves Barbosa 2 , Jason Giovannettone 3, T. V. Lakshmi Kumar 4, Manoj Kumar Thakur 5 and Catarina de Oliveira Buriti 6 1 Department of Civil Engineering, San Carlos Campus, University of the Western Plains Ezequiel Zamora, San Carlos 2201, Venezuela 2 Laboratório de Análise e Processamento de Imagens de Satélites (LAPIS), Instituto de Ciências Atmosféricas, A. C. Simões Campus, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Alagoas 57072-900, Brazil;
[email protected] 3 Dewberry, 8401 Arlington Blvd., Fairfax, VA 22031, USA;
[email protected] 4 Atmospheric Science Research Laboratory, SRM University, Kattankulathur 603203, India;
[email protected] 5 Department of Physics, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu 44600, Nepal;
[email protected] 6 National Semi-Arid Institute (INSA), Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTIC), Campina Grande 58100-000, Brazil;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +58-258-2517-675 Abstract: The Amazon River Basin (ARB) plays an important role in the hydrological cycle at the regional and global scales. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the incidence and severity of droughts could increase in this basin due to human-induced climate change. Therefore, the assessment of the impacts of extreme droughts in the ARB is of vital importance to develop appropriate drought mitigation strategies. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive characterization of dry spells and extreme drought events in terms of occurrence, Citation: Paredes-Trejo, F.; Barbosa, persistence, spatial extent, severity, and impacts on streamflow and vegetation in the ARB during H.A.; Giovannettone, J.; Lakshmi the period 1901–2018.