Drought Monitoring in Sub-Sahara Africa

Drought is one of the main natural hazards affecting the environment and economy of countries all over the world. Fusing weather data with satellite images therefore becomes a superior method of identifying and monitoring drought in a given region. We established the relationship between land surface temperature (LST), the normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) and rainfall data to derive areas of drought. Then, we obtained the indexes from the rainfall anomaly and NDVI anomaly as indicators which confirm the drought indicative claims of the maps produced. Our further examination of the NDVI, LST and rainfall maps indicate that the western, central and Volta Regions of the study area are the least prone to drought, with Axim (one of the most southern towns) in Ghana recording the highest rainfall in the country each year.