Abstract
Drought over the Greek region is characterized by a strong seasonal cycle and large spatial variability. Dry spells longer than 10 consecutive days mainly characterize the duration and the intensity of Greek drought. Moreover, an increasing trend of the frequency of drought episodes has been observed, especially during the last 20 years of the 20th century. Moreover, the most recent regional circulation models (RCMs) present discrepancies compared to observed precipitation, while they are able to reproduce the main patterns of atmospheric circulation. In this study, both a statistical and a dynamical downscaling approach are used to quantify drought episodes over Greece by simulating the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for different time steps (3, 6, and 12 months). A statistical downscaling technique based on artificial neural network is employed for the estimation of SPI over Greece, while this drought index is also estimated using the RCM precipitation for the time period of 1961–1990. Overall, it was found that the drought characteristics (intensity, duration, and spatial extent) were well reproduced by the regional climate models for long term drought indices (SPI12) while ANN simulations are better for the short-term drought indices (SPI3).
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexandersson H (1986) A homogeneity test Applied to Precipitation Data. J Climatol 6:661–675
Alley WM (1984) The Palmer drought severity index: limitations and assumptions. J Clim Appl Meteorol 23(1):1100–1109. doi:10.1175/1520-0450(1984)023<1100:TPDSIL>2.0.CO;2
Anagnostopoulou C (2003) A contribution of drought analysis in Greece. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, Ph. D. dissertation
Anagnostopoulou C, Maheras P, Karacostas T, Vafiadis M (2003) Spatial and temporal analysis of dry spells in. Greece Theor Appl Climatol 74(1–2):77–91
Anagnostopoulou C, Tolika K, and Maheras P (2012) Drought index over Greece as simulated by a statistical downscaling model. Advances in Meteorology, Climatology and Atmospheric Physics Springer Atmospheric Sciences 385–390. doi:10.1007/978–3–642-29172-2_54
Beranová R, Kyselý J (2015) Links between circulation indices and precipitation in the Mediterranean in an ensemble of regional climate models. Theor Appl Climatol 123(3):693–701. doi:10.1007/s00704-015-1381-6
Blenkinsop S, Fowler H (2007) Changes in European drought characteristics projected by the PRUDENCE regional climate models. Int J Climatol 27:1595–1610. doi:10.1002/joc.1538
Briffa RK, Jones DP, Hulme M (1994) Summer moisture variability across Europe, 1892-1991: an analysis based on the Palmer drought severity index. Int J Climatol 14:475–506
Byun HR, Wilhite AD (1999) Objective quantification of drought severity and duration. J Clim 12:1747–2756
Ceglar A, Honzak L, Žagar N, Skok G, Žabkar R, Rakovec J (2015) Evaluation of precipitation in the ENSEMBLES regional climate models over the complex orography of Slovenia. Int J Climatol 35:2574–2591. doi:10.1002/joc.4158
Christensen OB et al (2006) The HIRHAM regional climate model, version 5. DMI Tech. Rep. 06–17 22 pp. http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/tr06-17.pdf.
Dalezios RN, Papazafiriou GZ, Papamichail MD, Karacostas ST (1991) Drought assessment for the potential of precipitation enhancement in Northern Greece. Theor Appl Climatol 44:75–88
Fahlman SE (1988) Faster-learning variations on back-propagation: an empirical study” in proceedings connectionist models Summer School Morgan-Kaufmann. Altos CA, Los
Forzieri G, Feyen L, Rojas R, Flörke M, Wimmer F, Bianchi A (2014) Ensemble projections of future streamflow droughts in Europe. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 18(1):85–108. doi:10.5194/hess-18-85-2014
Gibbs WJ (1987) A Drought Watch System World Climate Programme WMO/TD No 193 wcp-134 1–22
Goodess CM, Anagnostopoulou C, Bàrdossy A, Frei C, et al (2012) An intercomparison of statistical downscaling methods for Europe and European regions- assessing their performance with respect to extreme temperature and precipitation events. Published as CUR RP11 in 2012, University of East Anglia, CRU Research Publication series, 68p
Guttman BN (1998) Comparing the Palmer drought index and standardized precipitation index. JAWRA-J Am Water Resour Assoc 34(1):113–121
Guttman BN (1999) Accepting the standardized precipitation index: a calculation algorithm. JAWRA-J Am Water Resour Ass 35(2):311–322
Hasan T (2015) Downscaling standardized precipitation index via model output statistics. Atmósfera 28(2):83–98. doi:10.1016/S0187-6236(15)30002-3
Hayes MJ (2006) Drought indices http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/indices.htm
Heinrich G, Gobiet A (2012) The future of dry and wet spells in Europe: a comprehensive study based on the ENSEMBLES regional climate models. Int J Climatol 32:1951–1970
Jacob D et al. (2001) A comprehensive model intercomparison study investigating the water budget during the BALTEX-PIDCAP period. Meteorog Atmos Phys 77:19–43
Jones DP, Hulme M, Briffa RK, Jones GC, Mitchell BFJ, Murphy MJ (1996) Summer moisture availability over Europe in the Hadley Centre general circulation model based on the Palmer drought severity index. Int J Climatol 16:155–172
Komuscu UA (1999) Using the SPI to analyze spatial and temporal patterns of drought in Turkey. Drought Network News 11 7–13. http://www.drought.unl.edu/pubs/dnn.html
Koutroulis A, Vrohidou AE, Tsanis I (2011) Spatiotemporal characteristics of meteorological drought for the island of Crete. J Hydrometeor 12:206–226. doi:10.1175/2010JHM1252.1
Lana X, Serra C, Burgueno A (2001) Patterns of monthly rainfall shortage and excess in terms of the standardized precipitation index for Catalonia (Spain). Int J Climatol 21:1669–1691
van der Linden P, Mitchell JFB (2009) ENSEMBLES: climate change and its impacts: summary of research and results from the ENSEMBLES project. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
Livada V, Assimakopoulos D (2007) Spatial and temporal analysis of drought in Greece using the. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) Theor Appl Climatol 89(3):143–153
Lloyd-Hughes B, Saunders AM (2002) A drought climatology for Europe. Int J Climatol 22:1571–1592
Maheras P (2000) Synoptic situations causing drought in the Mediterranean basin. Drought and Drought Mitigation in Europe, J.V. Vogt and Somma F. (eds.) 91–102
McCarthy JJ, Canziani OF, Leary NA, Dokken DJ and White KS (2001) Climate change 2001. Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group I1 to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
McKee TB, Doesken NJ and Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scale. Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Applied Cliamatology. American Meteorological Society Boston 179–184
van Meijgaard E et al (2008) The KNMI regional atmospheric climate model, version 2.1, KNMI Tech. Rep. 302, R. Neth. Meteorol. Inst., De Bilt, Netherlands.
Meteorological Office (1991) The meteorological glossary, Sixth edn. HMSO, London
Meyer SJ, Hubbard KG, Wilhite DA (1993) A crop-specific drought index for corn: I. Model development and validation. Agron J 86:388–395
Min SK, Kwon WT, Park EH, Choi Y (2003) Spatial and temporal comparisons of droughts over Korea with East Asia. Int J Climatol 23(2):223–233
Naresh Kumar M, Murthy C, Sesha Sai M, Roy P (2009) On the use of standardized precipitation index (SPI) for drought intensity assessment. Meteorol Appl 16:381–389. doi:10.1002/met.136
Nastos PT, Politi N, Kapsomenakis J (2013) Spatial and temporal variability of the aridity index in Greece. Atmos Res 119:140–152. doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2011.06.017
Oladipo OE (1985) A comparative performance analysis of three meteorological drought index. Int J Climatol 5:655–664
Pal JS, Giorgi F, Bi X, et al. (2007) Regional climate modeling for the developing world: the ICTP RegCM3 and RegCNET. Bull Amer Meteor Soc 88:1395–1409. doi:10.1175/BAMS-88-9-1395
Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought. US Department of Commerce Weather Bureau Research Paper No. 45
Pita FM (2000) Un nouvel indice de sécherresse pour les domaines Méditerranéens. Application au bassin du Guadalquivir (Sud-Ouest de l;Espagne). Public de l’AIC 13:225–234
Roeckner E et al (2003) The atmospheric general circulation model ECHAM 5. PART I: model description, MPI-Report 349, Hamburg, Germany
Samuelsson P, Gollvik S and Ullerstig A (2006). The land-surface scheme of the Rossby Centre regional atmospheric climate model (RCA3). Report in Meteorology 122, SMHI. SE-601 76 Norrköping, Sweden, 25
Seiler AR, Hayes M, Bressan L (2002) Using standardized precipitation index for flood risk monitoring. Int J Climatol 22:1365–1376
Soulé TP (1992) Spatial patterns of drought frequency and duration in the contiguous USA based on multiple drought event definitions. Int J Climatol 12:11–24
Sousa P, Trigo R, Aizpurua R, Nieto R, Gimeno L, Garcia-Herrera R (2011) Trends and extremes of drought indices throughout the 20th century in the Mediterranean. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 11:33–51. doi:10.5194/nhess-11-33-2011
Szalai S and CS Szinell (2000) Comparison of two drought indices for drought monitoring in Hungary—a case study. Drought and Drought Mitigation in Europe JV Vogt and Somma F (eds) 14:161–166
Szinell SC, Bussay A, Szentimrey T (1998) Drought tendencies in Hungary. Int J Climatol 18:1479–1491
Tannehill IR (1947) Drought: its causes and effects. Princecton University Press, Princecton NJ
Tolika K, Maheras P (2005) Spatial and temporal characteristics of wet spells in Greece. Theor Appl Climatol 81(1–2):71–85
Tolika K, Maheras P, Vafiadis M, Flocas HA, Arseni-Papadimitriou A (2007a) Simulation of seasonal precipitation and rain days over Greece: a statistical downscaling technique based on artificial neural networks (ANNs). Int J Climatol 27:861–881. doi:10.1002/joc.1442
Tolika K, Maheras P, Vafiadis M, Flocas HA, Arseni-Papadimitriou A (2007b) Simulation of seasonal precipitation and rain days over Greece: a statistical downscaling technique based on artificial neural networks (ANNs). Int J Climatol 27:861–881. doi:10.1002/joc.1442
Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2004) Towards a drought watch system based on spatial SPI. Water Resour Manag 18(1):1–12
Tselioudis G, Douvis C, Zerefos C (2012) Does dynamical downscaling introduce novel information in climate model simulations of precipitation change over a complex topography region? Int J Climatol 32:1572–1578. doi:10.1002/joc.2360
Vasiliades L, Loukas A, Liberis N (2011) A water balance derived drought index for Pinios River basin, Greece. Water Resour Manag 25(4):1087–1101
Vasiliades L, Loukas A, Patsonas G (2009) Evaluation of a statistical downscaling procedure for the estimation of climate change impacts on droughts. Nat. Hazards earth Syst. Sci 9:879–894
Wallen CC (1967) Aridity definition and their applicability Geographiska Annaler. Stockholm 49A:367–384
Wilhite AD, Glantz NH (1985) Understanding the drought phenomenon: the role of definitions. Water Int 10:111–120
Wilhite AD, Hayes JM and Svoboda DM (2000) Drought monitoring and assessment: status and trends in the United States. Drought and Drought Mitigation in Europe, J.V. Vogt and Somma F. (eds) 14:149–160
WMO (World Meteorological Organization) (1975) Drought and agriculture: report of the CAgM Working Group on the Assessment of Drought. World Meteorological Organization Technical Note No 138, 392, Geneva, Switzerland.
Wu H, Hayes MJ, Weiss A, Hu Q (2001) An evaluation of the standardized precipitation index, the China-Z index and the statistical Z-score. Int J Climatol 21(6):745–758
Xoplaki E, Luterbacher J, Burkard R, Patrikas I, Maheras P (2000) Connection between the large-scale 500 hPa geopotential height fields and precipitation over Greece during wintertime. Clim Res 14:129–146
Yamoah C, Bationo A, Shapiro B and Koala S (2011) Use of rainfall indices to analyze the effects of phosphate rocks on millet in the Sahel. African Journal of Agricultural Research 6(3) 586–593. Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJAR
Zanis P et al. (2009) Analysis of an ensemble of present day and future regional climate simulations for Greece. Int J Climatol 29(11):1614–1633
Zhai J, Su B, Krysanova V, Vetter T, Gao C, Jiang T (2010) Spatial variation and trends in PDSI and SPI indices and their relation to streamflow in 10 large regions of China. J Clim 23:649–663. doi:10.1175/2009JCLI2968.1
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Anagnostopoulou, C. Drought episodes over Greece as simulated by dynamical and statistical downscaling approaches. Theor Appl Climatol 129, 587–605 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1799-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1799-5