Abstract
Time series of drought indices has been considered mostly in view of temporal and spatial distributions of a drought index so far. Here we investigate the statistical properties of a daily Effective Drought Index (EDI) itself for Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Mokpo for the period of 100 years from 1913 to 2012. We have found that both in dry and wet seasons the distribution of EDI as a function of EDI follows the Gaussian function. In dry season the shape of the Gaussian function is characteristically broader than that in wet seasons. The total number of drought days during the period we have analyzed is related both to the mean value and more importantly to the standard deviation. We have also found that according to the distribution of the number of occasions where the EDI values of several consecutive days are all less than a threshold, the distribution follows the exponential distribution. The slope of the best fit becomes steeper not only as the critical EDI value becomes more negative but also as the number of consecutive days increases. The slope of the exponential distribution becomes steeper as the number of the city in which EDI is simultaneously less than a critical EDI in a row increases. Finally, we conclude by pointing out implications of our findings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Boken, V. K., A. P. Cracknell, and R. H. Heathcote, 2005: Monitoring and predicting agricultural drought: A global study. Oxford University Press, New York, 472 pp.
Byun, H. R., and D. A. Whilhite, 1999: Objective quantification of drought severity and duration. J. Climate., 12, 2747–2756.
Byun, H. R., and D. K. Lee, 2002: Defining three rainy seasons and the hydrological summer monsoon in Korea using available water resources index. J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 80, 33–44.
Byun, H. R., S. J. Lee, S. Morid, K. S. Choi, S. M. Lee, and D. W. Kim, 2008: Study on the periodicities of droughts in Korea. Asia-Pac. J. Atmos. Sci., 44, 417–441.
Chang, H. Y., and S. J. Oh, 2012: Does correction factor vary with solar cycle?. J. Astron. Space Sci., 29, 97–101.
Choi, K. S., D. W. Kim, and H. R. Byun, 2009: Possible impact of spring sea ice anomaly in the North Pacific on the Korean summer drought. Asia-Pac. J. Atmos. Sci., 45, 331–346.
Dai, A., 2011: Drought under global warming: A review. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2, 45–65.
Gibbs, W. J., and J. V. Maher, 1967: Rainfall deciles as drought indicators. Bureau of meteorology bull. 48, Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, Australia.
Hollinger, S. E., S. A. Isard, and M. R. Welford, 1993: A new soil moisture drought index for predicting crop yields. 8th Conference on Applied Climatology, Anaheim, CA, Amer. Meteor. Soc., 187–190
Im, E. S., J. B. Ahn, and D. W. Kim, 2012: An assessment of future dryness over Korea based on the ECHAM5-RegCM3 model chain under A1B emission scenario. Asia-Pac. J. Atmos. Sci., 48, 325–337.
Kim, D. W., and H. R. Byun, 2009a: Future pattern of Asian drought under global warming scenario. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 98, 137–150.
Kim, D. W., and K. S. Choi, 2009: Evaluation, modification, and application of the effective drought index to 200-year drought climatology of Seoul, Korea. J. Hydrol., 378, 1–12.
Kim, M.-K., W. K. M. Lau, K.-M. Kim, and W.-S. Lee, 2007: A GCM study of effects of radiative forcing of sulfate aerosol on large scale circulation and rainfall in East Asia during boreal spring. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L24701.
McKee, T. B., N. J. Doesken, and J. Kleist, 1993: The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. 8th Conference on Applied Climatology, Anaheim, CA, Amer. Meteor. Soc., 179–184.
McKee, T. B., N. J. Doesken, and J. Kleist, 1995: Drought monitoring with multiple time scales. 9th Conference on Applied Climatology. Dallas, Texas, Amer. Meteor. Soc., 233–236.
Meyer, S. J., and K. G. Hubbard, 1995: Extending the crop-specific drought index to soybean. 9th Conference on Applied Climatology, Dallas, Texas, Amer. Meteor. Soc., 258–259.
Min, S. K., W. T. KWON, E. H. Park, and Y. Choi, 2003: Spatial and temporal comparisons of droughts over Korea with East Asia. Int. J. Climatol., 23, 223–233.
Mishra, A. K., and V. P. Singh, 2010: A review of drought concepts. J. Hydrol., 391, 202–216.
Morid S., V. Smakhtin, and M. Moghaddasi, 2006: Comparison of seven meteorological indices for drought monitoring in Iran. Int J. Climatol., 26, 971–985.
Morid S., V. Smakhtin, and K. Bagherzadeh, 2007: Drought forecasting using artificial neural networks and time series of drought indices. Int J. Climatol., 27, 2103–2111.
Oh, S. B., D. W. Kim, K. S. Choi, and H. R. Byun, 2010: Introduction of East Asian drought monitoring system. SOLA, 6A, 009–012.
Palmer, W. C., 1965: Meteorologic drought. US department of commerce, weather bureau, Research Paper, 45, 1–58.
Palmer, W. C., 1968: Keeping track of crop moisture conditions, nationwide: The new crop moisture index. Weatherwise, 21, 156–161.
Pandey R. P., and K. S. Ramasastri, 2001: Relationship between the common climatic parameters and average drought frequency. Hydrol. Process., 15, 1019–1032.
Pandey R. P., B. B. Dash, S. K. Mishra, and R. Singh, 2008: Study of indices for drought characterization in KBK districts in Orissa (India). Hydrol. Process., 22, 1895–1907.
Ponce, V. M., R. P. Pandey, and S. Ercan, 2000: Characterization of drought across climatic spectrum. J. Hydrol. Eng., ASCE, 5, 222–224.
Qian, C., and T. Zhou, 2013: Multidecadal variability of North China aridity and its relationship to PDO during 1900–2010. J. Climate, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00235.1.
Rao, A. R., G. D. Jeong, and F. J. Chang, 1992: Estimation of periodicities in hydrologic data. Stochastic Hydrol. Hydraul., 6, 270–288.
Shafer, B. A., and L. E. Dezman, 1982: Development of a Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI) to assess the severity of drought conditions in snowpack runoff areas. Western SnowConf., Reno, NV, Colorado State University, 164–175.
Seo, L., T. W. Kim, and H. H. Kwon, 2012: Investigation of trend variations in annual maximum rainfalls in South Korea. KSCE J. Civ.ing. Eng., 16, 215–221.
Sohn, S. J., C. Y. Tam, and J. B. Ahn, 2013a: Development of a multimodel-based seasonal prediction system for extreme droughts and floods: a case study for South Korea. Int. J. Climatol., 33, 793–805.
Sohn, S. J., C. Y. Tam, and J. B. Ahn, 2013b: Six month-lead downscaling prediction of winter to spring drought in South Korea based on a multimodel ensemble. Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 579–583.
Van Rooy, M. P., 1965: A rainfall anomaly index independent of time and space. Notos, 14, 43–48.
Yoo, J., H. H. Kwon, T. W. Kim, and J. H. Ahn, 2012: Drought frequency analysis using cluster analysis and bivariate probability distribution. J. Hydrol., 420–421, 102–111.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Park, JH., Kim, KB. & Chang, HY. Statistical properties of effective drought index (EDI) for Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Mokpo in South Korea. Asia-Pacific J Atmos Sci 50, 453–458 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-014-0035-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-014-0035-4