Discrepancy precipitation index for monitoring meteorological drought

Abstract

Widely employed precipitation drought indices, one way or another, impose probability distribution functions to the data when performing the drought analysis. This may be a plausible approach when the data do not have strong discrepancy which can impede the distribution. The precipitation data in semi-arid and especially in arid regions do have a strong discrepancy due to the sporadic rainfall occurring in such regions. Therefore, in the analysis of the drought for such regions, imposing any probability distribution function to the data could be futile. This study hence developed a new drought index called the Discrepancy Precipitation Index (DPI) for assessing and monitoring the meteorological drought. The method does not impose any probability distribution on the precipitation data. The method is based on the discrepancy of the data with respect to the mean value. The drought classifications are proposed based on the D-score values. Its drought classification ranges are straightforward as those of the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI). The method is applied to assess the meteorological drought at several stations located at different climatic regions such as the arid climate (Mauritania), semi-arid climate (Afghanistan) and the Mediterranean climate (Turkey). The results reveal that the DPI is more representative drought assessment tool for the arid climate regions. At semi-arid climate regions, the DPI can be an alternative drought index to the widely employed (the log-SPI and/or the gamma-SPI) indices. For the Mediterranean climate regions, the DPI can be used together with the other indices. The Discrepancy Measure (DM) is introduced to assess the strength of the discrepancy of the precipitation data series. As the DM of a precipitation series increases, the DPI captures more historical droughts.