Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

SPI-Based Probabilistic Analysis of Drought Areal Extent in Sicily

  • Published:
Water Resources Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Drought is a natural phenomenon that presents spatial and temporal features whose knowledge is fundamental for an appropriate water resources management. In particular, the assessment of probabilities and return periods of areal extent of droughts of different severities over a region can provide useful information for planning drought management. In this study, an analytical methodology to characterize probabilistically the relationship between meteorological drought severity (computed in terms of Standardized Precipitation Index, SPI) and areal extent, expressed as Drought severity-Area-Frequency (SAF) curves, is proposed. In particular, analytical expressions of SAF curves describing the proportion of the total area of the region of interest where the SPI values are below a fixed threshold are derived. The developed curves enable to characterize a given drought event in a region, by computing the probability of occurrence of SAF curves exceeding the one observed. The proposed methodology is validated through the investigation of the spatio-temporal features of drought occurrences over Sicily, Italy, for the period 1921–2005.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bonaccorso B, Bordi I, Cancelliere A, Rossi G, Sutera A (2003a) Spatial variability of drought: an analysis of the SPI in Sicily. Water Resour Manag 17(4):273–296

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorso B, Cancelliere A, Rossi G (2003b) An analytical formulation of return period of drought severity. Stoch Env Res Risk A 17(1):157–174

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorso B, Cancelliere A, Rossi G (2012) Methods for drought analysis and forecasting. In: Balakrishnan N (ed) Methods and applications of statistics in the atmospheric and earth sciences. John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, pp 150–184. ISBN 9780470503447

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorso B, Peres DJ, Cancelliere A, Rossi G (2013) Large scale probabilistic drought characterization over Europe. Water Resour Manag 27:1675–1692

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bordi I, Fraedrich K, Sutera A (2009) Observed drought and wetness trends in Europe: an update. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 13(8):1519–1530

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burke EJ, Brown SJ (2010) Regional drought over the UK and changes in the future. J Hydrol 394:471–485

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cancelliere A (2011) Stochastic characterization of droughts in stationary and periodic series. Proquest, Umi Dissertation Publishing, ISBN: 978-124397532

  • Cancelliere A, Salas J (2004) Drought length properties for periodic stochastic hydrological data. Water Resour Res 10(2):1–13

    Google Scholar 

  • Cancelliere A, Salas J (2010) Drought probabilities and return period for annual streamflows series. J Hydrol 391:77–89

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards DC, McKee TB (1997) Characteristics of 20th century drought in the United States at multiple time scales. Climatology Report No. 97-2, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado

  • Hayes MJ, Svoboda M, Wilhite DA, Vanyarkho O (1999) Monitoring the 1996 drought using the SPI. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 80:429–438

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henriques AG, Santos MJJ (1999) Regional drought distribution model. Phys Chem Earth (B) 24(1–2):19–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hisdal H, Tallaksen LM (2003) Estimation of regional meteorological and hydrological drought characteristics: a case study for Denmark. J Hydrol 281:230–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson N, Kotz S, Balakrishnan N (1994) Continuous univariate distributions, vol 1. Wiley & Sons, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall DR, Dracup JA (1992) On the generation of drought events using an alternating renewal-reward model. Stoch Hydrol Hydraul 6(1):55–68

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim T, Valdés J, Aparicio J (2002) Frequency and spatial characteristics of droughts in the Conchos river basin, Mexico. Water Int 27(3):420–430

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd-Hughes B, Saunders M (2002) A drought climatology for Europe. Int J Climatol 22(13):1571–1592

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loukas A, Vasiliades L (2004) Probabilistic analysis of drought spatiotemporal characteristics in Thessaly region, Greece. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 4(5–6):719–731

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Applied Climatology. American Meteorological Society, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Mishra A, Desai V (2005) Spatial and temporal drought analysis in the Kansabati river basin, India. Int J River Basin Manag 3(1):31–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mishra A, Singh V (2008) Development of drought SAF curves. In: Singh V (ed) Hydrology and hydraulics. Water Resources Publications, Highlands Ranch, pp 811–831

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohan S, Sahoo PK (2008) Stochastic simulation of droughts. part 1: point droughts. Hydrol Process 22:854–862

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mood AM, Graybill FA, Boes DC (1974) Introduction to the theory of statistics. McGraw-Hill, ISBN: 0-07-042864-6

  • Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought. Research Paper 45, U.S. Weather Bureau, Washington, D.C.

  • Raziei T, Bordi I, Pereira LS (2011) An application of GPCC and NCEP/NCAR datasets for drought variability analysis in Iran. Water Resour Manag 25(4):1075–1086

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raziei T, Bordi I, Pereira LS (2013) Regional drought modes in Iran using the SPI: the effect of time scale and spatial resolution. Water Resour Manag 27(6):1661–1674

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rossi G, Bonaccorso B, Nicolosi V, Cancelliere A (2009) Characterizing drought risk in a sicilian river basin. In: Iglesias A et al (eds) Coping with drought risk in agriculture and water supply systems. Springer, Dordrech, pp 187–219, ISBN: 9781402090448

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Santos M (1983) Regional droughts: a stochastic characterization. J Hydrol 66(1–4):183–211

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos JF, Pulido-Calvo I, Portela MM (2010) Spatial and temporal variability of droughts in Portugal. Water Resour Res 46, W03503. doi:10.1029/2009WR008071

    Google Scholar 

  • Sciuto G, Bonaccorso B, Cancelliere A, Rossi G (2009) Quality control of daily rainfall data with neural networks. J Hydrol 364:13–22. doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2008.10.008

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheffield J, Goteti G, Wen F, Wood EF (2004) A simulated soil moisture based drought analysis for the United States. J Geophys Res 109, D24108. doi:10.1029/2004JD005182

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheppard WF (1899) On the application of the theory of error to cases of normal distribution and normal correlation. Philos Trans R Soc Lond Ser A Contain Pap Math Phys Charact 192:101–167

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shiau J, Shen HW (2001) Recurrence analysis of hydrologic droughts of differing severity. J Water Resour Plan Manag 127(1):30–40

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional drought assessment based on Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI). Water Resour Manag 21(5):821–833

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vicente-Serrano SM (2006) Differences in spatial patterns of drought on different time scales: an analysis of the Iberian Peninsula. Water Resour Manag 20:37–60

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zelenhasic E, Salvai A (1987) A method of streamflow drought analysis. Water Resour Res 23(1):156–168

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil, Computer, Construction and Environmental Engineering and Applied Mathematics, University of Messina, C.da di Dio, 98166, Villaggio S. Agata, Messina, Italy

    Brunella Bonaccorso

  2. Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Catania, V.le A. Doria 6, 95125, Catania, Italy

    David J. Peres & Antonino Cancelliere

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Catania, V.le A. Doria 6, 95125, Catania, Italy

    Antonio Castano

Authors
  1. Brunella Bonaccorso
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. David J. Peres
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Antonio Castano
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Antonino Cancelliere
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brunella Bonaccorso.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bonaccorso, B., Peres, D.J., Castano, A. et al. SPI-Based Probabilistic Analysis of Drought Areal Extent in Sicily. Water Resour Manage 29, 459–470 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-014-0673-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-014-0673-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation