Evaluation of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA v7) in drought monitoring over southwest Iran

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 55-73
Author(s):  
M Montazeri ◽  
MSK Kiany ◽  
SA Masoodian

Characterizing the errors in satellite-based precipitation estimations for drought monitoring is of great importance, as these estimations provide both spatially and temporally complete records. The aim of this study was to evaluate satellite-based quantitative precipitation estimates to monitor meteorological drought in southwestern Iran. The reliability of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Version 7 products (3B42 and 3B43) in estimating the standardized precipitation index (SPI) was evaluated against a ground-based gridded precipitation dataset at 0.25° spatial resolution for 1998-2016. The analysis conducted for the SPI at various time scales revealed that both products (3B42 and 3B43) are capable of capturing the spatial and temporal behavior of drought events over the study region, with the best performance at SPI6. 3B43 is also more efficient in the identification of shorter severe drought events compared to 3B42. The findings suggest that both satellite products, particularly 3B43, are suitable to be used directly for SPI computation in the region for drought monitoring and early warning in terms of the accuracy and the spatial and temporal resolutions they provide.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Zhu ◽  
Yulin Luo ◽  
Dongyang Zhou ◽  
Yue-Ping Xu ◽  
Guoqing Wang ◽  
...  

Drought is a natural hazard disaster that can deeply affect environments, economies, and societies around the world. Therefore, accurate monitoring of patterns in drought is important. Precipitation is the key variable to define the drought index. However, the spare and uneven distribution of rain gauges limit the access of long-term and reliable in situ observations. Remote sensing techniques enrich the precipitation data at different temporal–spatial resolutions. In this study, the climate prediction center morphing (CMORPH) technique (CMORPH-CRT), the tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM) multi-satellite precipitation analysis (TRMM 3B42V7), and the integrated multi-satellite retrievals for global precipitation measurement (IMERG V05) were evaluated and compared with in situ observations for the drought monitoring in the Xiang River Basin, a humid region in China. A widely-used drought index, the standardized precipitation index (SPI), was chosen to evaluate the drought monitoring utility. The atmospheric water deficit (AWD) was used for comparison of the drought estimation with SPI. The results were as follows: (1) IMERG V05 precipitation products showed the highest accuracy against grid-based precipitation, followed by CMORPH-CRT, which performed better than TRMM 3B42V7; (2) IMERG V05 showed the best performance in SPI-1 (one-month SPI) estimations compared with CMORPH-CRT and TRMM 3B42V7; (3) SPI-1 was more suitable for drought monitoring than AWD in the Xiang River Basin, because its high R-values and low root mean square error (RMSE) compared with the corresponding index based on in situ observations; (4) drought conditions in 2015 were apparently more severe than that in 2016 and 2017, with the driest area mainly distributed in the southwest part of the Xiang River Basin.


Public Choice ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Wenzel

Abstract Natural disasters are challenges for good governance. That conclusion follows from recent research investigating the effects of natural disasters on one important force hostile to good governance: public sector corruption. However, a specific analysis of droughts is so far neglected in the still-young relevant strand of the literature. The present paper fills that gap by analyzing the short- and long-term influence of droughts on public sector corruption within a unified panel estimation approach for 120 countries during the period 1985–2013. Relying on a meteorological drought measure, the Standardized Precipitation Index, we show that more severe drought exposure is followed by more corruption. The effect holds for subsamples of developing and developed countries. The robustness of the results is supported by a variety of stability tests. Furthermore, we provide initial evidence on the transmission paths of drought-induced corruption, which differ depending on the countries’ level of development. Whereas droughts increase corruption risk in developing countries by triggering significantly larger aid inflows and less democratic accountability and transparency, corruption in developed countries rises as a consequence of governmental drought relief payments.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 3366
Author(s):  
Mairon Ânderson Cordeiro Correa de Carvalho ◽  
Eduardo Morgan Uliana ◽  
Demetrius David da Silva ◽  
Uilson Ricardo Venâncio Aires ◽  
Camila Aparecida da Silva Martins ◽  
...  

Drought is a natural disaster that affects a country’s economy and food security. The monitoring of droughts assists in planning assertive actions to mitigate the resulting environmental and economic impacts. This work aimed to evaluate the performance of the standardized precipitation index (SPI) using rainfall data estimated by orbital remote sensing in the monitoring of meteorological drought in the Cerrado–Amazon transition region, Brazil. Historical series from 34 rain gauge stations, in addition to indirect measurements of monthly precipitation obtained by remote sensing using the products CHIRPS-2.0, PERSIANN-CDR, PERSIANN-CCS, PERSIANN, GPM-3IMERGMv6, and GPM-3IMERGDLv6, were used in this study. Drought events detected by SPI were related to a reduction in soybean production. The SPI calculated from the historical rain series estimated by remote sensing allowed monitoring droughts, enabling a high detailing of the spatial variability of droughts in the region, mainly during the soybean development cycle. Indirect precipitation measures associated with SPI that have adequate performance for detecting droughts in the study region were PERSIANN-CCS (January), CHIRPS-2.0 (February and November), and GPM-3IMERGMv6 (March, September, and December). The SPI and the use of precipitation data estimated by remote sensing are effective for characterizing and monitoring meteorological drought in the study region.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Anarul Haque Mondol ◽  
Xuan Zhu ◽  
David Dunkerley ◽  
Benjamin J. Henley

<p>The nature and characteristics of drought are not like a flood, cyclone or storm surge since droughts cannot easily be tracked and are difficult to quantify as a distinct event. In this study, we examined the characteristics of meteorological drought occurrence and severity using the Effective Drought Index (EDI), including the drought events, drought chronology, onset and ending of drought, consecutive drought spells, drought frequency, intensity and severity, using North-Bengal of Bangladesh as a case study. The rainfall and temperature dataset of Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) for the study region throughout 1979-2018 is utilised. The trends of drought are detected by using the Mann-Kendall test and Sen Slope estimation. We evaluated the performance of EDI using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), historical drought records and rice production. The study finds that seasonal and annual droughts have become more frequent in all seasons except pre-monsoon. In addition, the largest decrease in seasonal EDI is found in the monsoon in both Teesta floodplain and Barind tract. In decades prior to the late 2000s, a drought spell typically started between March to May (± 15 days) and ended with the monsoonal rainfall in June/July. In the years since the last 2000s, monsoon and post-monsoon droughts spells have significantly increased. Overall, the peak intensities of droughts are higher in the Barind tract than in the Teesta floodplain, and the frequency and severity of moderate to severe drought are increasing significantly in the Barind tract. Though EDI is strongly correlated with the SPI index, EDI and rice production have a non-linear relationship and are not significantly correlated. Hence, this research suggests that there are other significant influences on yield rather than just climatological drought (e.g. irrigation, lack of technology and management etc.).</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 889-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Dutra ◽  
F. Wetterhall ◽  
F. Di Giuseppe ◽  
G. Naumann ◽  
P. Barbosa ◽  
...  

Abstract. Near-real time drought monitoring can provide decision makers valuable information for use in several areas, such as water resources management, or international aid. One of the main constrains of assessing the current drought situation is associated with the lack of reliable sources of observed precipitation on a global scale available in near-real time. Furthermore, monitoring systems also need a long record of past observations to provide mean climatological conditions. To address these problems a novel probabilistic drought monitoring methodology based on ECMWF probabilistic forecasts is presented where probabilistic monthly means of precipitation were derived from short-range forecasts and merged with the long term climatology of the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) dataset. From the merged dataset, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was estimated. This methodology was compared with the GPCC first guess precipitation product and also SPI calculations using the ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation datasets. ECMWF probabilistic forecasts for near-real time monitoring are similar to GPCC and TRMM in terms of correlation and root mean square errors, with the added value of including an estimate of the uncertainty given by the ensemble spread. The real time availability of this product and its stability, i.e. that it does not depend directly on local rain-gauges or single satellite products, are also beneficial in light of an operational implementation.


Author(s):  
M. Behifar ◽  
A. A. Kakroodi ◽  
M. Kiavarz ◽  
F. Amiraslani

Abstract. The main problem using meteorological drought indices include inappropriate distribution of meteorological stations. Satellite data have reliable spatial and temporal resolution and provide valuable information used in many different applications. The Standardized precipitation index has several advantages. The SPI is based on rainfall data alone and has a variable time scale and is thus conducive to describing drought conditions for different application.This study aims to calculate SPI using satellite precipitation data and compare the results with traditional methods. To do this, satellite-based precipitation data were assessed against station data and then the standardized precipitation index was calculated. The results have indicated that satellite-based SPI could illustrate drought spatial characteristic more accurate than station-based index. Also, the standardized property of the SPI index allows comparisons between different locations, which is one of the remote sensing drought indices limitations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Spinoni ◽  
G. Naumann ◽  
J. Vogt

Abstract. Meteorological drought is generally defined as a prolonged deficiency of precipitation and is considered one of the most relevant natural hazards as the related impacts can involve many different sectors. In this study, we investigated the spatial patterns of European droughts for the periods 1981–2010, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100, focusing on the projections under a moderate emissions scenario. To do that, we used the outputs of the KNMI-RACMO2 model, which belongs to the A1B family and whose spatial resolution is 0.25° × 0.25°. By means of monthly precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET), we computed the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) at the 12-month accumulation scale. Thereafter, we separately obtained drought frequency, duration, severity, and intensity for the whole of Europe, excluding Iceland. According to both indicators, the spatial drought patterns are projected to follow what recently characterized Europe: southern Europe, who experienced many severe drought events in the last decades, is likely to be involved by longer, more frequent, severe, and intense droughts in the near future (2041–2070) and even more in the far future (2071–2100). This tendency is more evident using the SPEI, which also depends on temperature and consequently reflects the expected warming that will be highest for the Mediterranean area in Europe. On the other side, less severe and fewer drought events are likely to occur in northern Europe. This tendency is more evident using the SPI, because the precipitation increase is projected to outbalance the temperature (and PET) rise in particular in Scandinavia. Regarding the mid-latitudes, the SPEI-based analyses point at more frequent drought events, while the SPI-based ones point at less frequent events in these regions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathilde Erfurt ◽  
Rüdiger Glaser ◽  
Kerstin Stahl

<p>In 2018, large areas of central and northern Europe were affected by an extreme drought. The water deficit propagated through the hydrologic cycle causing precipitation, soil moisture and, towards the end of 2018, streamflow and groundwater deficits. In Germany many socio-economic sectors were severely affected by the drought, e.g. the forestry sector has still not recovered. Main drivers for drought propagation are precipitation deficits. However, the natural variability of dry and wet precipitation patterns over time and space make characterization of droughts and predictions of impacts still challenging.</p><p>This study investigates German meteorological drought characteristics within general wet and dry spells since 1901 using station based daily precipitation data. Daily, monthly and seasonal aggregated indices such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) were used to characterize duration, severity and spatial extent of the 2018 drought. These characteristics were then compared with events of extreme droughts since 1901. Even though the meteorological drought of 2018 was extreme considering only precipitation data, we found comparable extremes in the past, for instance 1949 or 1964. However, based on what we observe in the SPI-12, clusters of extreme dry years in the 20th century were often followed by clusters of above average wet years, probably leading to a reduction of impacts in the following years. Since 2003, however, dry patterns predominate. Even though annual precipitation amounts are predicted to increase slightly in the study region this analysis shows the importance of analyzing sub annual as well as multi-year characteristics of precipitation patterns.</p><p>Including both wet and dry conditions when characterizing the severity of current drought events may improve our understanding of extreme meteorological drought events causing severe and long lasting impacts.</p>


2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 1217-1229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. Quiring

Abstract Drought is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to accurately describe because its definition is both spatially variant and context dependent. Decision makers in local, state, and federal agencies commonly use operational drought definitions that are based on specific drought index thresholds to trigger water conservation measures and determine levels of drought assistance. Unfortunately, many state drought plans utilize operational drought definitions that are derived subjectively and therefore may not be appropriate for triggering drought responses. This paper presents an objective methodology for establishing operational drought definitions. The advantages of this methodology are demonstrated by calculating meteorological drought thresholds for the Palmer drought severity index, the standardized precipitation index, and percent of normal precipitation using both station and climate division data from Texas. Results indicate that using subjectively derived operational drought definitions may lead to over- or underestimating true drought severity. Therefore, it is more appropriate to use an objective location-specific method for defining operational drought thresholds.


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