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Multivariate drought frequency estimation using copula method in Southwest China

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Abstract

Drought over Southwest China occurs frequently and has an obvious seasonal characteristic. Proper management of regional droughts requires knowledge of the expected frequency or probability of specific climate information. This study utilized k-means classification and copulas to demonstrate the regional drought occurrence probability and return period based on trivariate drought properties, i.e., drought duration, severity, and peak. A drought event in this study was defined when 3-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) was less than −0.99 according to the regional climate characteristic. Then, the next step was to classify the region into six clusters by k-means method based on annual and seasonal precipitation and temperature and to establish marginal probabilistic distributions for each drought property in each sub-region. Several copula types were selected to test the best fit distribution, and Student t copula was recognized as the best one to integrate drought duration, severity, and peak. The results indicated that a proper classification was important for a regional drought frequency analysis, and copulas were useful tools in exploring the associations of the correlated drought variables and analyzing drought frequency. Student t copula was a robust and proper function for drought joint probability and return period analysis, which is important for analyzing and predicting the regional drought risks.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. This work was supported by the 1-3-5 Innovation Project of RADI_CAS (No. Y3ZZ15101A), the Hundred Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. Y24002101A), CAS-TWAS Project for Drought Monitoring and Assessment (No. Y3YI2701KB), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31571565), Global Change Research Key Project of MOST 973 Program (No. 2010CB951302), and the Social Commonweal Meteorological Research Project (No. GYHY201106027).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Municipal Weather Forecast Center, Beijing, 100089, China

    Cui Hao

  2. Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Sciences, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100094, China

    Cui Hao & Jiahua Zhang

  3. School of Geosciences, Yangtze University, Wuhan, 430100, China

    Jiahua Zhang

  4. Key Laboratory of Computational Geodynamics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Fengmei Yao

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  1. Cui Hao
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  2. Jiahua Zhang
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  3. Fengmei Yao
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Correspondence to Jiahua Zhang or Fengmei Yao.

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Hao, C., Zhang, J. & Yao, F. Multivariate drought frequency estimation using copula method in Southwest China. Theor Appl Climatol 127, 977–991 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1678-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1678-5

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