A dataset of drought degree monitoring on the Mongolian Plateau from 1981 to 2018

<p indent="0mm">The Mongolian Plateau, located in the hinterland of Northeast Asia, is ecologically fragile and prone to frequent droughts. Long-term monitoring of drought severity is the basis for understanding the characteristics of drought occurrence, development and evolution, as well as analyzing the causes of drought occurrence in the region. Based on the AVHRR-PathFinder and MODIS datasets on the Mongolian Plateau from 1981 to 2018, this study utilizes the Ts-NDVI general feature to derive the TVDI inversion model. Monthly and annual TVDI data from 1981 to 2018 were then retrieved, resulting in a dataset of drought degree monitoring on the Mongolian Plateau. The dataset was verified using the measured 10-cm soil moisture data of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region from 1991 to 2012. The results showed a correlation of 0.55 between TVDI and soil moisture, indicating that TVDI effectively reflects soil moisture changes in this region and is a reasonable drought evaluation index. The dataset reveals that droughts primarily occurs in the southern, central and eastern parts of the plateau, while the northern and northwest regions experience little to no droughts. From 1981 to 2018, both the drought severity and the affected areas showed an increasing trend, with variation in drought severity and extend across different months of the year. This dataset provides effective data support for the research on drought monitoring and its driving mechanism on the Mongolian Plateau.