Historical 12 month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index across Canada

Persistent, large-area droughts are among Canada’s costliest natural disasters, having major impacts on sectors such as agriculture, industry, forestry, recreation, human health and society, and ecosystems. This dataset provides 50 km gridded, 12-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) values across land regions of Canada. Over southern areas of the country (south of 60°N) data are from 1900-2011 while in northern areas, the time period is shorter (approximately 1950-2011). The SPEI is a commonly used drought index, which evaluates the deviation of moisture deficit calculated as the difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, the latter determined by temperature. It can be calculated on a variety of temporal scales (e.g., 1, 3, 12, 24 months). The values are standardized with negative SPEI representing drier than normal conditions and positive values corresponding to wetter than normal conditions. The SPEI are calculated using precipitation and temperature input from the Canadian gridded (CANGRD) dataset. For each grid point, the data consist of consecutive monthly values that represent the SPEI values for the previous 12 months. At present, these data have been used to characterize historical drought and excessive wet periods over the Oldman and Swift Current Creek watersheds in the southern Prairies, and the Athabasca River Basin in north-central Alberta.

Supplemental Information

References:

Vicente-Serrano S.M., Begueria S., Lopez-Moreno J.I. 2010. A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index. Journal of Climate 23: 1696-1718.

Bonsal, B.R. and C. Cuell. 2017. Hydro-climatic variability and extremes over the Athabasca river basin: Historical trends and projected future occurrence. Canadian Water Resources Journal, 42, 315-335, doi:10.1080/07011784.2017.1328288.

Bonsal, B.R., C. Cuell, E. Wheaton, D.J. Sauchyn, and E. Barrow. 2017. An assessment of historical and projected future hydro-climatic variability and extremes over southern watersheds in the Canadian Prairies, International Journal of Climatology, doi:10.1002/joc.4967.

Datasets available for download

• SPEI-Canada-Historical-12 month-1900 to 2011-v01.csvCSV
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• View ECCC Data Mart (English)HTML
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• Canada
• Climate
• Climatology
• Drought
• Exessive Moisture
• Nature and Environment
• Precipitation
• Temperature
• Time Series
• Weather and Climate
• atmosphere
• gridding
• interpolation
• meteorology

Additional Info

• Maturity Level 1 (46%)
• Maturity Level 2 (23%)
• Maturity Level 3 (0%)
• Maturity Level 4 (0%)
• Maturity Level 5 (0%)
• Maturity Level 6 (0%)

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 20, 2025, 03:54 (UTC)
Created	October 20, 2025, 03:54 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	Historical 12 month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index across Canada
Description A description of the dataset.	Persistent, large-area droughts are among Canada’s costliest natural disasters, having major impacts on sectors such as agriculture, industry, forestry, recreation, human health and society, and ecosystems. This dataset provides 50 km gridded, 12-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) values across land regions of Canada. Over southern areas of the country (south of 60°N) data are from 1900-2011 while in northern areas, the time period is shorter (approximately 1950-2011). The SPEI is a commonly used drought index, which evaluates the deviation of moisture deficit calculated as the difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, the latter determined by temperature. It can be calculated on a variety of temporal scales (e.g., 1, 3, 12, 24 months). The values are standardized with negative SPEI representing drier than normal conditions and positive values corresponding to wetter than normal conditions. The SPEI are calculated using precipitation and temperature input from the Canadian gridded (CANGRD) dataset. For each grid point, the data consist of consecutive monthly values that represent the SPEI values for the previous 12 months. At present, these data have been used to characterize historical drought and excessive wet periods over the Oldman and Swift Current Creek watersheds in the southern Prairies, and the Athabasca River Basin in north-central Alberta. Supplemental Information References: Vicente-Serrano S.M., Begueria S., Lopez-Moreno J.I. 2010. A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index. Journal of Climate 23: 1696-1718. Bonsal, B.R. and C. Cuell. 2017. Hydro-climatic variability and extremes over the Athabasca river basin: Historical trends and projected future occurrence. Canadian Water Resources Journal, 42, 315-335, doi:10.1080/07011784.2017.1328288. Bonsal, B.R., C. Cuell, E. Wheaton, D.J. Sauchyn, and E. Barrow. 2017. An assessment of historical and projected future hydro-climatic variability and extremes over southern watersheds in the Canadian Prairies, International Journal of Climatology, doi:10.1002/joc.4967.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	Canada Climate Climatology Drought Exessive Moisture Nature and Environment Precipitation Temperature Time Series Weather and Climate atmosphere gridding interpolation meteorology
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2018-10-24
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Open Government Licence - Canada
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/55fa8f11-aa8c-4232-86da-2e370239e096
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	Environment and Climate Change Canada | Environnement et Changement climatique Canada
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.	None
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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