Droughts are among the most significant natural phenomena. Induced by a lack of precipitation and intensified by other factors, they are primarily expressed as meteorological droughts that impact surface and subsurface water (hydrological droughts), agriculture (agricultural droughts) and socio-economic activities (socio-economic droughts). In the instrumental period, droughts can be described by various drought indices. In pre-instrumental times they can be studied based on various types of documentary evidence, including narrative sources (annals, chronicles, memoirs), visual and early weather observations, ecclesiastic evidence, economic sources, newspapers, old prints, epigraphic sources etc. All these data sources offer very rich qualitative or quantitative information of past droughts given in the form of either direct information about meteorological conditions or indirect information about the availability of water or various impacts on society. The main aim of the special issue is to provide a concise overview of recent historical drought research around the world based on documentary data with a truly interdisciplinary character, involving historians, geographers, hydrologists, climatologists, hydrometeorologists or environmental scientists, amongst others. Investigations carried out on regional, supra-regional or global scales and covering various parts of the past millennium are welcomed. They may include the construction of long-term drought chronologies and case studies of outstanding drought events. The papers may focus on various aspects of droughts in the past, including their long-term variability, seasonality, frequency, magnitude, forcings and synoptic controls, impacts on human society, and human responses to droughts. The verification and extension of existing datasets, the application and comparison of different historical source types, and the development of new drought series in different parts of the world are also welcome topics of this special issue.

The special issue is open to all relevant drought studies based on documentary evidence.