Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Effect of Air Temperature on Historical Trend of Long-Term Droughts in Different Climates of Iran

  • Published:
Water Resources Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Effective monitoring of drought plays an important role in water resources planning and management, especially under global warming effect. The aim of this paper is to study the effect of air temperature on historical long-term droughts in regions with diverse climates in Iran. To this end, monthly air temperature (T) and precipitation (P) data were gathered from 15 longest record meteorological stations in Iran covering the period 1951–2014. Long-term meteorological droughts behavior was quantified using two different drought indices, i.e. the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Linear and non-linear trends in T, P, SPI and SPEI were evaluated using non-parametric and parametric statistical approaches such as non-modified and modified Mann-Kendall Test, Theil-Sen approach, and simple regression. The results indicated that the significant trends for temperature are approximately all increasing (0.2 °C to 0.5 °C per decade), and for precipitation are mostly decreasing (−7.2 mm to −14.8 mm per decade). It was also indicated that long-term drought intensities monitored by the SPI and SPEI have had significant downward trend (drought intensification with time) at most stations of interest. The observed trends in the SPI series can be worsen if air temperature (in addition to precipitation) participates in drought monitoring as SPEI. In arid and extra arid climates, it was observed that temperature has strong effects on historical drought characteristics when comparing the SPI and SPEI series. Due to the determinative role of temperature in mostly dry regions like Iran, the study suggests using the SPEI rather than SPI for more effective monitoring of droughts.

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

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Al-Faraj FAM, Tigkas D, Scholz M (2016) Irrigation efficiency improvement for sustainable agriculture in changing climate: a transboundary watershed between Iraq and Iran. Environ Process 3:603–6016. doi:10.1007/s40710-016-0148-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allen RG, Pereira LS, Raes D, Smith M (1998) Crop evapotranspiration: guidelines for computing crop water requirements. FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56, FAO, Italy

  • Andreadis KM, Lettenmaier DP (2006) Trends in 20th century drought over the continental United States. Geophys Res Lett 33(10):L10403. doi:10.1029/2006GL025711

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asadi Zarch MA, Malekinezhad H, Mobin MH, Dastorani MT, Kousari MR (2011) Drought monitoring by reconnaissance drought index (RDI) in Iran. Water Resour Manag 25(13):3485–3504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bari Abarghouei H, Asadi Zarch MA, Dastorani MT, Kousari MR, Safari Zarch M (2011) The survey of climatic drought trend in Iran. Stoch Env Res Risk A 25(6):851–863

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beguería S, Vicente-Serrano SM, Reig F, Latorre B (2014) Standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) revisited: parameter fitting, evapotranspiration models, tools, datasets and drought monitoring. Int J Climatol 34:3001–3023. doi:10.1002/joc.3887

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradley JV (1968) Distribution-free statistical tests. 1st edn. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs

  • Buishand TA (1982) Some methods for testing the homogeneity of rainfall records. J Hydrol 58:11–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dai A (2013) Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models. Nat Clim Chang 3(2):52–58. doi:10.1038/nclimate1633

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Damberg L, AghaKouchak A (2014) Global trends and patterns of droughts from space. Theor Appl Climatol 117(3):441–448

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Das PK, Dutta D, Sharma JR, Dadhwal VK (2016) Trends and behaviour of meteorological drought (1901–2008) over Indian region using standardized precipitation–evapotranspiration index. Int J Climatol 36(2):909–916

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Draper NR, Smith H (1999) Applied regression analysis. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Easterling DR, Wallis TWR, Lawrimore JH, Heim RR (2007) Effects of temperature and precipitation trends on U.S. drought. Geophys Res Lett 34(20):L20709. doi:10.1029/2007GL031541

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

  • Golian S, Mazdiyasni O, AghaKouchak A (2015) Trends in meteorological and agricultural droughts in Iran. Theor Appl Climatol 119(3):679–688

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamed KH, Ramachandra Rao A (1998) A modified Mann-Kendall trend test for autocorrelated data. J Hydrol 204(1):182–196

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hargreaves GL, Samani ZA (1985) Reference crop evapotranspiration from temperature. Appl Eng Agric 1:96–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kazemzadeh M, Malekian A (2016) Spatial characteristics and temporal trends of meteorological and hydrological droughts in northwestern Iran. Nat Hazards 80(1):191–210

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kendall MG (1975) Rank correlation methods. Griffin, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Khalili D, Farnoud T, Jamshidi H, Kamgar-Haghighi AA, Zand-Parsa S (2011) Comparability analyses of the SPI and RDI meteorological drought indices in different climatic zones. Water Resour Manag 25:1737–1757. doi:10.1007/s11269-010-9772-z

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kousari MR, Dastorani MT, Niazi Y, Soheili E, Hayatzadeh M, Chezgi J (2014) Trend detection of drought in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran based on implementation of reconnaissance drought index (RDI) and application of non-parametrical statistical method. Water Resour Manag 28(7):1857–1872

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maleski JJ, Martinez CJ (2017) Historical trends in precipitation, temperature and drought in the Alabama–Coosa–Tallapoosa and Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint river basins. Int J Climatol 37 (2): 583-595. doi:10.1002/joc.4723

  • Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCabe GJ, Wolock DM (2015) Variability and trends in global drought. Earth Space Sci 2(6):223–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Proc Eighth Conference Appl Climatol, American Meteorological Society, Boston pp. 179–184

  • Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391(1–2):202–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moradi Dashtpagerdi M, Kousari MR, Vagharfard V, Ghonchepour D, Esmaeilzadeh Hosseini M, Ahani H (2015) An investigation of drought magnitude trend during 1975–2005 in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran. Environ Earth Sci 73:1231–1244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rahimi J, Ebrahimpour M, Khalili A (2013) Spatial changes of extended de Martonne climatic zones affected by climate change in Iran. Theor Appl Climatol 112(3):409–418

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raziei T, Saghafian B, Paulo AA, Pereira LS, Bordi I (2009) Spatial patterns and temporal variability of drought in western Iran. Water Resour Manag 23(3):439–455

  • Seager R, Tzanova A, Nakamura J (2009) Drought in the southeastern United States: causes, variability over the last millennium, and the potential for future hydroclimate change. J Clim 22(19):5021–5045

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen PK (1968) Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall's Tau. J Am Stat Assoc 63(324):1379–1389

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheffield J, Wood EF (2008) Global trends and variability in soil moisture and drought characteristics, 1950–2000, from observation-driven simulations of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle. J Clim 21(3):432–458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shokoohi A, Morovati R (2015) Basinwide comparison of RDI and SPI within an IWRM framework. Water Resour Manag 29:2011–2026. doi:10.1007/s11269-015-0925-y

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shukla S, Safeeq M, AghaKouchak A, Guan K, Funk C (2015) Temperature impacts on the water year 2014 drought in California. Geophys Res Lett 42(11):4384–4393

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soulé PT, Yin ZY (1995) Short- to long-term trends in hydrologic drought conditions in the contiguous United States. Clim Res 5(2):149–157

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tabari H, Abghari H, Hosseinzadeh Talaee P (2012) Temporal trends and spatial characteristics of drought and rainfall in arid and semiarid regions of Iran. Hydrol Process 26(22):3351–3361

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Theil H (1992) A rank-invariant method of linear and polynomial regression analysis. Henri Theil’s contributions to economics and econometrics. In: Raj B, Dordrecht KJ (eds) Econometric Theory and Methodology. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 345–381

  • Thornthwaite CW (1948) An approach toward a rational classification of climate. Geogr Rev 38:55–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2005) Establishing a drought index incorporating evapotranspiration. Eur Water 9-10:1–9

    Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vicente-Serrano SM, Beguería S, López-Moreno JI (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23(7):1696–1718

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • von Storch H (1999) Misuses of statistical analysis in climate research. Analysis of Climate Variability: Applications of Statistical Techniques Proceedings of an Autumn School Organized by the Commission of the European Community on Elba from October 30 to November 6, 1993. von Storch H, Navarra A. Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer Berlin Heidelberg: 11–26

  • Wang G (2005) Agricultural drought in a future climate: results from 15 global climate models participating in the IPCC 4th assessment. Clim Dyn 25(7):739–753

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang Q, Shi P, Lei T, Geng G, Liu J, Mo X, Li X, Zhou H, Wu J (2015) The alleviating trend of drought in the Huang-Huai-Hai plain of China based on the daily SPEI. Int J Climatol 35(13):3760–3769

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu H, Hayes MJ, Wilhite DA, Svoboda MD (2005) The effect of the length of record on the standardized precipitation index calculation. Int J Climatol 25(4):505–520

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yue S, Pilon P, Phinney B, Cavadias G (2002) The influence of autocorrelation on the ability to detect trend in hydrological series. Hydrol Process 16(9):1807–1829

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zarei AR, Moghimi MM, Mahmoudi MR (2016) Parametric and non-parametric trend of drought in arid and semi-arid regions using RDI index. Water Resour Manag 30:5479–5500

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zoljoodi M, Didevarasl A (2013) Evaluation of spatial–temporal variability of drought events in Iran using palmer drought severity index and its principal factors (through 1951–2005). Atmos Clim Sci 3:193–207

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to show my gratitude to Dr. Majid Habibi Nokhandan for his generous help and assistance during the course of this research, and I thank the Editor and “anonymous” reviewer for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Irrigation and Reclamation Engineering, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran

    Javad Bazrafshan

Authors
  1. Javad Bazrafshan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Javad Bazrafshan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bazrafshan, J. Effect of Air Temperature on Historical Trend of Long-Term Droughts in Different Climates of Iran. Water Resour Manage 31, 4683–4698 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1773-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1773-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation