A multi-model and multi-index evaluation of drought characteristics in the 21st century

Touma, Danielle; Ashfaq, Moetasim; Nayak, Munir Ahmad; Kao, Shih‐Chieh; Diffenbaugh, Noah S.

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.12.011

Cited by 327 publications

(213 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…For instance, Stagge et al [63] demonstrated that the optimal distribution for standardization may vary for different regions. Touma et al [64] carried out analyses on several drought indices and they also reported varied candidate distributions for different locations. In recent years, more attention has been given to the non-parametric approaches (e.g., Huang et al [65]).…”

Section: Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Apprehensive Drought Characteristics over Iraq: Results of a Multidecadal Spatiotemporal Assessment

2018

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Drought is an extreme climate phenomenon that happens slowly and periodically threatens the environmental and socio-economic sectors. Iraq is one of the countries in the Middle East that has been dealing with serious drought-related issues in the 21st century. Here, we investigate meteorological drought across Iraq from 1948 to 2009 at 0.25 • spatial resolution. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) has been utilized as a multi-scalar drought index accounting for the effects of temperature variability on drought. Four of the main characteristics of drought including extent, intensity, frequency and duration are studied and the associated spatiotemporal patterns are investigated for each case. Results revealed a significant drought exacerbation over Iraq during the period of 1998-2009. Two significant drought periods of 1998-1999 and 2007-2008 are identified during which severe to extreme droughts covered about 87% and 82% of Iraq, respectively. Analyzing the trends of drought intensity reveals that the central and southwestern parts of Iraq have experienced aggravated intensifying patterns among other regions. In general, droughts are found to be more frequent but shorter at the western, central and southeastern parts of Iraq.

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Section: Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Apprehensive Drought Characteristics over Iraq: Results of a Multidecadal Spatiotemporal Assessment

2018

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“…For meteorological droughts, the indices include the PDSI (Palmer, 1965), the SPI (McKee et al, 1993) and the SPEI (Vicente-Serrano et al, 2010). As different studies have used different meteorological drought indices (Seneviratne, 2012;Sheffield et al, 2012;Trenberth et al, 2014;Nasrollahi et al, 2015;Touma et al, 2015), this study focuses on the SPEI. Devised by Vicente-Serrano et al (2010), the SPEI has the advantage of considering the effects of temperature variability on drought relative to the SPI (Naumann et al, 2014).…”

Section: Meteorological Drought Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moderately dry or more severe ≤ −1.0 D2 Very dry or more severe ≤ −2.0 D3 Extremely dry or more severe ≤ −3.0 2011; Hoerling et al, 2012;Seneviratne, 2012;Trenberth et al, 2014;Touma et al, 2015). The temporal trend is investigated with a nonparametric and monotonic trend test based on the S statistic of the Mann-Kendall trend test (Mann, 1945;Kendall, 1976).…”

Section: D1mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this test, an increasing (positive) trend or decreasing (negative) trend is tested for at a significance level of 5 %. Different measures have been defined and used in past studies to assess the frequency, severity and spatial extent of drought (e.g., Wang et al, 2011;Touma et al, 2015) because it is not straightforward to define these quantities in practice. For example, Touma et al (2015) defined the duration, occurrence and spatial extent of drought to investigate the drought changes with 15 CMIP5 models throughout the world in the 21st century.…”

Section: D1mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The degrees of increasing drought frequency and intensity varied with the stations in the study region. Furthermore, Touma et al (2015) used data from 15 global climate models in CMIP5 and assessed the likelihood of changes in the spatial extent, duration and number of occurrences of four drought indices, including the SPI, SPEI, and others. Dai (2015, 2016) assessed the self-calibrated PDSI (sc-PDSI) with multiple CMIP3 and CMIP5 model projections on the global scale and showed that the drought frequency and area increased with increasing sc-PDSI, even under low to moderate emission scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of different reference periods on drought index (SPEI) estimations from 1901 to 2014

Kim

Park

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. This study aims to understand how different reference periods (i.e., calibration periods) of climate data used to estimate drought indices influence regional drought assessments. Specifically, we investigate the influences of different reference periods on historical drought characteristics, such as the trend, frequency, intensity and spatial extent, using the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) with a 12-month lag (SPEI-12), which was estimated from the datasets of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and the University of Delaware (UDEL). For the 1901-1957 (P1) and 1958-2014 (P2) estimation periods, three different types of reference periods are used to compute the SPEI: P1 and P2 together, P1 and P2 separately and P1 only. Focusing on East Asia, Europe, the United States and West Africa, we find that the influence of the reference period is significant in East Asia and West Africa, with dominant drying trends from P1 to P2. The reference period influenced the assessment of drought characteristics, particularly the severity and spatial extent, whereas the influence on the frequency was relatively small. Finally, self-calibration, which is the most common practice for indices such as the SPEI, tends to underestimate the drought severity and spatial extent relative to the other approaches used in this study. Although the conclusions drawn in this study are limited by the use of two global datasets, they highlight the need for clarification of the reference period in drought assessments to better understand regional drought characteristics and the associated temporal changes, particularly under climate change scenarios.

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Active microwave observations of diurnal and seasonal variations of canopy water content across the humid African tropical forests

Konings

et al. 2017

Geophysical Research Letters

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A higher frequency of severe droughts under warmer temperatures is expected to lead to large impacts on global water and carbon fluxes and on vegetation cover—including possible widespread mortality. Monitoring the hydraulic state of vegetation as represented by the canopy water content will allow rapid assessment of vegetation water stress. Here we show the potential of active microwave backscatter observations at Ku band for monitoring the diurnal and seasonal variations of top‐of‐canopy water content. We focus on the humid tropical forests of Central Africa and examine spatiotemporal variations of radar backscatter from QuikSCAT (2001–2009) and RapidScat (2014–2016). Diurnal variations in RapidScat backscatter demonstrate the occurrence of widespread midday stomatal closure in this region. Increases in backscatter during the dry seasons in humid forests could be explained by both dry season leaf flushing (as supported by canopy structure) and vapor pressure deficit‐driven increases in evapotranspiration rates.

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A multi-model and multi-index evaluation of drought characteristics in the 21st century

Cited by 327 publications

References 48 publications

Apprehensive Drought Characteristics over Iraq: Results of a Multidecadal Spatiotemporal Assessment

Apprehensive Drought Characteristics over Iraq: Results of a Multidecadal Spatiotemporal Assessment

Effects of different reference periods on drought index (SPEI) estimations from 1901 to 2014

Active microwave observations of diurnal and seasonal variations of canopy water content across the humid African tropical forests

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