The Jordan River Valley has experienced multi-year droughts that pose challenges for natural ecosystems, agriculture and water supply. This project aims to study recent and historic drought events in order to understand climatic boundary conditions that lead to the emergence of extreme droughts in the Middle East. Past drought events will be characterized by different indices (e.g. SPEI, PDSI) and spatiotemporal patterns of drought severity will be studied to identify most affected areas. Finally, this topic will work on improved subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) hydrometeorological prediction of droughts.