scholarly journals Spatio-temporal analysis of maximum drought severity using Copulas in Northern Algeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (S1) ◽  
pp. 68-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soumia Mellak ◽  
Doudja Souag-Gamane

Abstract Drought mitigation and prevention require a broader knowledge of the spatio-temporal characteristics and return periods of droughts over several years. In this research, drought characteristics (severity, duration, frequency and areal extent) have been analysed in northern Algeria by using the Standardized Precipitation Index to identify drought events from 194 precipitation stations. For frequency analysis, three Archimedean copula families were used to find a relationship between drought duration and severity. The severity–duration–frequency (SDF) and the severity–area–frequency (SAF) curves were obtained. The SDF and SAF curves are then used to build three-dimensional surfaces of drought severity, drought duration and cumulated percentage of the affected area (SDA) for each return period. It has been shown that the return periods of maximum drought events severity vary according to their durations. To address the issue of long-term droughts, a new classification of dry events based on drought severities is proposed. The obtained results show that the western part of Algeria is the most sensitive to severe/extreme droughts of short durations and high probabilities of exceedance. For long-term durations, the study area was sensitive to mild droughts with lower probabilities.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Clement Kambombe ◽  
Cosmo Ngongondo ◽  
Levis Eneya ◽  
Maurice Monjerezi ◽  
Clement Boyce

Abstract Drought phenomena are attributed to water availability deficit that is caused by low precipitation. However, droughts are quite complex and cannot simply be defined on the basis of precipitation as other factors may have an influence. In this study, we investigated the spatio-temporal patterns of droughts in Lake Chilwa Basin, an endorheic lake basin that has recently experienced major recurrent lake recessions. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at six- and twelve-month timescales were used to evaluate drought severity variations from 1970 to 2018, in relation to the recessions. The stationarity difference in rainfall between 1973 to 1995 and 1996 to 2018 and climatological trends were tested using Mann-Whitney and Mann-Kendall tests, respectively. The El Niño Southern Oscilation (ENSO) influence on rainfall was also investigated. In general, the results show a statistically insignificant decreasing rainfall trend, coupled with statistically significant temperature increase (a=0.05). In addition, both indices broadly detected droughts within similar category ranges and variation patterns, suggesting minimal influence of temperature on droughts compared to rainfall. The study also reveals that not every ENSO event leads to low rainfall in the basin. It is further shown that unlike past major recessions e.g., 1994/95, recent lake dry-ups of 2012 and 2015 were as a result of milder droughts. Moreover, the trigger threshold of lake dry-ups is shown to have shifted; such that average annual rainfall below 1000mm is likely to yield a dry-up in recent times than before, which may be attributable to anthropogenic pressure.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Omolola M. Adisa ◽  
Muthoni Masinde ◽  
Joel O. Botai

This study examines the (dis)similarity of two commonly used indices Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) computed over accumulation periods 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month (hereafter SPI-1, SPI-3, SPI-6, and SPI-12, respectively) and Effective Drought Index (EDI). The analysis is based on two drought monitoring indicators (derived from SPI and EDI), namely, the Drought Duration (DD) and Drought Severity (DS) across the 93 South African Weather Service’s delineated rainfall districts over South Africa from 1980 to 2019. In the study, the Pearson correlation coefficient dissimilarity and periodogram dissimilarity estimates were used. The results indicate a positive correlation for the Pearson correlation coefficient dissimilarity and a positive value for periodogram of dissimilarity in both the DD and DS. With the Pearson correlation coefficient dissimilarity, the study demonstrates that the values of the SPI-1/EDI pair and the SPI-3/EDI pair exhibit the highest similar values for DD, while the SPI-6/EDI pair shows the highest similar values for DS. Moreover, dissimilarities are more obvious in SPI-12/EDI pair for DD and DS. When a periodogram of dissimilarity is used, the values of the SPI-1/EDI pair and SPI-6/EDI pair exhibit the highest similar values for DD, while SPI-1/EDI displayed the highest similar values for DS. Overall, the two measures show that the highest similarity is obtained in the SPI-1/EDI pair for DS. The results obtainable in this study contribute towards an in-depth knowledge of deviation between the EDI and SPI values for South Africa, depicting that these two drought indices values are replaceable in some rainfall districts of South Africa for drought monitoring and prediction, and this is a step towards the selection of the appropriate drought indices.


Data ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Matthew P. Lucas ◽  
Clay Trauernicht ◽  
Abby G. Frazier ◽  
Tomoaki Miura

Spatially explicit, wall-to-wall rainfall data provide foundational climatic information but alone are inadequate for characterizing meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, or ecological drought. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is one of the most widely used indicators of drought and defines localized conditions of both drought and excess rainfall based on period-specific (e.g., 1-month, 6-month, 12-month) accumulated precipitation relative to multi-year averages. A 93-year (1920–2012), high-resolution (250 m) gridded dataset of monthly rainfall available for the State of Hawai‘i was used to derive gridded, monthly SPI values for 1-, 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-, 24-, 36-, 48-, and 60-month intervals. Gridded SPI data were validated against independent, station-based calculations of SPI provided by the National Weather Service. The gridded SPI product was also compared with the U.S. Drought Monitor during the overlapping period. This SPI product provides several advantages over currently available drought indices for Hawai‘i in that it has statewide coverage over a long historical period at high spatial resolution to capture fine-scale climatic gradients and monitor changes in local drought severity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 1513-1530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingcheng Li ◽  
Dunxian She ◽  
Hui Zheng ◽  
Peirong Lin ◽  
Zong-Liang Yang

AbstractThis study elucidates drought characteristics in China during 1980–2015 using two commonly used meteorological drought indices: standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation–evapotranspiration index (SPEI). The results show that SPEI characterizes an overall increase in drought severity, area, and frequency during 1998–2015 compared with those during 1980–97, mainly due to the increasing potential evapotranspiration. By contrast, SPI does not reveal this phenomenon since precipitation does not exhibit a significant change overall. We further identify individual drought events using the three-dimensional (i.e., longitude, latitude, and time) clustering algorithm and apply the severity–area–duration (SAD) method to examine the drought spatiotemporal dynamics. Compared to SPI, SPEI identifies a lower drought frequency but with larger total drought areas overall. Additionally, SPEI identifies a greater number of severe drought events but a smaller number of slight drought events than the SPI. Approximately 30% of SPI-detected drought grids are not identified as drought by SPEI, and 40% of SPEI-detected drought grids are not recognized as drought by SPI. Both indices can roughly capture the major drought events, but SPEI-detected drought events are overall more severe than SPI. From the SAD analysis, SPI tends to identify drought as more severe over small areas within 1 million km2 and short durations less than 2 months, whereas SPEI tends to delineate drought as more severe across expansive areas larger than 3 million km2 and periods longer than 3 months. Given the fact that potential evapotranspiration increases in a warming climate, this study suggests SPEI may be more suitable than SPI in monitoring droughts under climate change.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (17) ◽  
pp. 6897-6911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuanpeng Zhao ◽  
Yaohuan Huang ◽  
Zhonghua Li ◽  
Mingxing Chen

Global changes, such as human activities and climate change, increase the odds of worsening drought. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite provides an opportunity to monitor drought levels by the total amount of water, instead of using a small finite set of water cycle elements or indirect indicators. The potential gap lies in the insufficient size of the GRACE record. The database does not meet the requirements of a stationary annual cycle calculated over a relatively long period as recommended by the IPCC, and the disturbance from long-term global changes is often not considered. In this work, a GRACE-based modulated water deficit (GRACE-MWD) process for drought monitoring under the modulated annual cycle (MAC) reference frame in southwest China was proposed. GRACE-MWD achieved a higher ratio of agreement with the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index at a time scale of 3 months (SPEI03): it ranged from 0.48 to 0.84, while the GRACE-based drought severity index (GRACE-DSI) ranged from 0.48 to 0.68. Compared with remote sensing datasets widely used in drought monitoring, GRACE-MWD data are less affected by seasonality from land-cover categories, which benefit from the MAC reference frame. The ratio-of-agreement metric for the study area showed that GRACE-MWD had a time scale between 7 and 11 months in reference to SPEI and the standardized precipitation index (SPI). The stability of the MAC reference frame to GRACE-MWD was further discussed when GRACE records were extended and was more stable than that of the stationary annual cycle. GRACE-MWD meets global changes via an adaptive reference frame, which is worthy of generalizing to global applications.


Author(s):  
L. Sathya ◽  
R. Lalitha

Droughts are regional phenomena, which are considered as one of the major natural environmental hazards and severely affect the water resources. Climate variability may result in harmful drought periods in semiarid regions. Meteorological drought indices are considered as important tools for drought monitoring, they are embedded with different theoretical and experimental structures. This study compares the performance of three indices of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) End Palmer Drought Severity Index (PNPI) to predict long-term drought events using the Thomas-Feiring Model and historical data. For studies of areal drought extent, the 61 years (1951-2011) historical rainfall data of Trichy District were utilized to generate 58 years (2012-2070) synthetic data series so that the characteristics of long-term drought might be determined and the performance of those three indices might be analyzed and compared. The results show that SPI and PNPI perform similarly with regard to drought identification and detailed analysis to determine the characteristics of long-term drought. Finally, the RAI indicated significant deviations from normalized natural processes.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1159-1171 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.-E. K. Vrochidou ◽  
I. K. Tsanis

Abstract. Precipitation records from 56 stations on the island of Crete (Greece) revealed that areal mean annual precipitation is of a strong orographic type and its magnitude decreases in west-east direction by as much as 400 mm on average. Amongst many parameters that influence precipitation, the elevation and longitude were the most important and provided the highest spatial correlation. It was found that during the year with minimum precipitation, the precipitation shortage was greater at high elevations while the precipitation excess during the year with maximum precipitation was greater in the western part of the island. The assessment of the spatial and temporal distribution of droughts was carried out with the aid of the Spatially Normalized Standardized Precipitation Index (SN-SPI) for the period 1974–2005 in order to compare drought conditions between neighbouring areas of differing precipitation heights. The analysis showed that severe droughts occurred around the year 1992–1993, with a duration of up to 3 yr. Multiple linear regression (MLR) modeling of precipitation in conjunction with cluster analysis of drought duration exhibits the linkage between precipitation, droughts and geographical factors. This connection between spatial precipitation distribution and geographical parameters provides an important clue for the respective spatial drought pattern. The above findings on the spatio-temporal drought distribution will update the current~drought management plans by developing more precise drought warning systems.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiyoumars Roushangar ◽  
Roghayeh Ghasempour ◽  
Vahid Nourani

Abstract Drought spatiotemporal variations assessment is an efficient method for implementing drought mitigation strategies and reducing its negative impacts. In this study, the spatiotemporal pattern of short to long-term droughts was assessed for an area with different climates. 31 stations located in Iran were considered and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) series with timescales of 3, 6, and 12 months were calculated during the 1951-2016 period. A hybrid methodology namely Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) was applied to obtain the SPIs time-frequency properties and multiscale zoning was done via K-means clustering approach. The energy amounts of decomposed subseries via the MODWT were used as inputs for K-means approach. Also, the statistics in drought features (i.e. drought duration, severity, and peak) were assessed and the results showed that shorter term droughts (i.e. SPI-3 and -6) were more frequent and severe in the north parts where the lowest values of drought duration were obtained. It was observed that the regions with more droughts frequency had the highest energy values. For shorter term droughts a direct relationship was obtained between the energy values and mean SPI, drought severity, and drought peak, whereas an inverse relationship was obtained for longer term drought. It was found that with increasing the degree of SPI, the similarity of the stations of each cluster increased too and the homogeneity of stations for the SPI-12 was slightly higher than the SPI-3 and -6.


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