Abstract
Drought is one of the most complex phenomena in the world; so, proper management is very important in monitoring and reducing its damage. For this purpose, Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) indices were used to analyze the intensity and frequency of drought in the coastal wet, mountain, semi-mountain, semi-desert, desert, and coastal desert climates of Iran in four seasons, separately: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. Forty-three synoptic stations with a common statistical period of 50 years (1969–2019) were selected. The results showed that the trend of drought in winter and summer is increasing in all studied climates. The comparison of the results in the trend analysis of the drought showed the same trend, but the SPEI index compared to the other indicators showed a quicker response to changes in drier climates. The highest correlation (0.80–0.99) between SPI-RDI and SPEI-RDI indices in coastal desert, mountain, and semi-mountain climates and the lowest correlation (0.34) between SPI-SPEI and SPEI-RDI indices in semi-desert, desert, and coastal desert climates were obtained. SPI-RDI variations showed similar values in colder climates. The SPEI is based on precipitation and temperature data, and it has the advantage of combining multi-scalar character with the capacity to include the effects of temperature variability in the drought assessment. Thus, SPEI is recommended as a suitable index for studying and identifying the effect of climate change on drought conditions.
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Data availability
All data used in this paper for Iran were extracted from metrological stations’ data and can also be requested from the corresponding author.
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Abbreviations
- CP:
-
changing point
- \(\widehat{\sigma }\) :
-
Standard deviation of the values of Yk
- \(\overline{Y }\) :
-
Arithmetic mean of the values of Yk
- \({\overline{a} }_{k}\) :
-
Values follow the normal log distribution Yk is equal to \({lna}_{k}\)
- \(\alpha\), \(\beta\) and \(\gamma\) :
-
Yk The scale, shape and principal parameters for the values of Di
- Aut.:
-
Autumn
- Di :
-
Water balance
- DOY:
-
Day format of the year
- ea :
-
Actual vapor pressure
- ED:
-
Extremely Drought
- es :
-
Saturation vapor pressure (kPa)
- ETref :
-
Reference evapotranspiration
- EW:
-
Extremely wet
- FAO:
-
Food and Agriculture Organization
- G:
-
Soil heat flux density (MJ m−2 d−1)
- MD:
-
Moderately Drought
- MW:
-
Moderately Wet
- PM-FAO56 :
-
Penman–Monteith equation based on FAO 56
- RDI:
-
Reconnaissance Drought Index
- RDIn:
-
Normalized RDI values
- RDIst:
-
Standardized RDI
- Rn :
-
Net radiation (MJ m−2 d−1)
- SD:
-
Severe Drought
- SPEI:
-
Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index
- SPI:
-
Standard Precipitation Index
- Spr.:
-
Spring
- Sum.:
-
Summer
- Ta :
-
Average air temperature (°C)
- Tmax :
-
Maximum temperature
- Tmean :
-
Average temperature
- Tmin :
-
Minimum temperature
- u2 :
-
Average wind speed at 2 m height (m s−1)
- VW:
-
Severely wet
- Win.:
-
Winter
- γ:
-
Psychometric constant (kPa °C)
- Δ:
-
The slope of the saturation vapor pressure function (kPa °C)
- μ1 :
-
Mutation 1
- μ2 :
-
Mutation 2
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S.S. and M.M.G. prepared data and performed model runs, designed the study, interpreted the results, and wrote the manuscript.
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Sharafi, S., Ghaleni, M.M. Spatial assessment of drought features over different climates and seasons across Iran. Theor Appl Climatol 147, 941–957 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03853-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03853-0