Abstract
Droughts are regional phenomena that dynamic varied along the time; however, the spatiotemporal dynamic processes of drought were usually ignored in the drought identification methods. To better understand the space-time structure of drought, a space-time continuum drought identification method was used to identify drought intensity, duration, and area in Huai River basin, and their multiple dependences were modeled by copulas. The Intensity-Area-Frequency (IAF) curves were used to model the regional variation of drought in this study. Without identified space-time structure of drought, the construction of IAF curves is usually focusing on the decreasing drought intensity with increasing areal extent. However, stronger drought intensity was found to be followed by larger areal extent when considering the space-time structure of drought, and a copula-based method was introduced to better constructive IAF curves. Conditional probabilities of several drought characteristics taking extreme values were further analyzed. Compared to probabilities estimated by univariate frequency analysis, results indicate that occurrence frequency of drought was underestimated when neglecting any natural characteristic of drought, and underestimation was more serious for the more extreme situations of drought. Furthermore, owing to stronger dependences of drought characteristics from short-term to long-term, more serious underestimations of occurrence frequency of drought were found for the drought from short-term to long-term when neglecting any natural characteristic of drought.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander L et al (2006) Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation. J Geophys Res 111. https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JD006290
Allen RG, Smith M, Pereira LS, Perrier A (1994) An update for the calculation of reference evapotranspiration. ICID Bull 43:35–92
Andreadis KM, Clark EA, Wood AW, Hamlet AF, Lettenmaier DP (2005) Twentieth-century drought in the conterminous United States. J Hydrometeorol 6:985–1001. https://doi.org/10.1175/jhm450.1
Asquith WH (2017) copBasic—general bivariate copula theory and many utility functions. R package version 205. Texas Tech University, Lubbock
Beguería S, Vicente-Serrano SM (2017) SPEI: calculation of the standardised precipitation-evapotranspiration index. R package version 17. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=SPEI. Accessed 10 May 2017
Bonaccorso B, Cancelliere A, Rossi G (2015) Probabilistic forecasting of drought class transitions in Sicily (Italy) using standardized precipitation index and North Atlantic oscillation index. J Hydrol 526:136–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.01.070
Caesar J, Alexander L, Vose R (2006) Large-scale changes in observed daily maximum and minimum temperatures: creation and analysis of a new gridded data set. J Geophys Res-Atmos 111:D05101. https://doi.org/10.1029/2005jd006280
Cancelliere A, Mauro GD, Bonaccorso B, Rossi G (2007) Drought forecasting using the standardized precipitation index. Water Resour Manag 21:801–819. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-006-9062-y
Chakak A, Koehler KJ (1995) A strategy for constructing multivariate distributions. Commun Stat Simul Comput 24:537–550
Chen YD, Zhang Q, Xiao MZ, Singh VP (2013) Evaluation of risk of hydrological droughts by the trivariate Plackett copula in the East River basin (China). Nat Hazards 68:529–547. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0628-8
Chen YD, Zhang Q, Xiao MZ, Singh VP, Zhang S (2016) Probabilistic forecasting of seasonal droughts in the Pearl River basin, China. Stoch Env Res Risk A 30:2031–2040
Dai A (2011) Drought under global warming: a review. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Chang 2:45–65. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.81
FAO (2016) http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/countries_regions/chn/. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Website accessed on [2017/07/15]
Genest C, Rémillard B, Beaudoin D (2009) Goodness-of-fit tests for copulas: a review and a power study. Insur Math Econ 44:199–213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.insmatheco.2007.10.005
Hernandez EA, Uddameri V (2014) Standardized precipitation evaporation index (SPEI)-based drought assessment in semi-arid south Texas. Environ Earth Sci 71:2491–2501
Hofert M, Kojadinovic I, Maechler M, Yan J (2017) copula: multivariate dependence with copulas. R package version 0999–17. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=copula. Accessed 10 May 2017
Huang S, Huang Q, Chang J, Chen Y, Xing L, Xie Y (2015) Copulas-based drought evolution characteristics and risk evaluation in a typical arid and semi-arid region. Water Resour Manag 29:1489–1503. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-014-0889-3
Kao SC, Govindaraju RS (2008) Trivariate statistical analysis of extreme rainfall events via the Plackett family of copulas. Water Resour Res 44:W02415
Lesk C, Rowhani P, Ramankutty N (2016) Influence of extreme weather disasters on global crop production. Nature 529:84–87. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16467
Lloyd-Hughes B (2012) A spatio-temporal structure-based approach to drought characterisation. Int J Climatol 32:406–418. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2280
Ma M, Ren L, Singh VP, Tu X, Jiang S, Liu Y (2015) Evaluation and application of the SPDI-JDI for droughts in Texas, USA. J Hydrol 521:34–45
McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In: Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Applied Climatology, Boston, MA. American Meteorological Society, pp 179–183
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391:202–216
Nelsen RB (2006) An introduction to copulas. Springer Verlag, New York
New M, Hulme M, Jones P (2000) Representing twentieth-century space–time climate variability. Part II: development of 1901–96 monthly grids of terrestrial surface climate. J Clim 13:2217–2238. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2000)013<2217:rtcstc>2.0.co;2
Renard B, Lang M (2007) Use of a Gaussian copula for multivariate extreme value analysis: some case studies in hydrology. Adv Water Resour 30:897–912. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2006.08.001
Rippey BR (2015) The U.S. drought of 2012. Weather Clim Extrem 10:57–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.10.004
Salvadori G (2007) Extremes in nature: an approach using copulas. Springer Verlag, New York
Salvadori G, De Michele C (2004) Frequency analysis via copulas: theoretical aspects and applications to hydrological events. Water Resour Res 40:W12511
Salvadori G, De Michele C (2006) Statistical characterization of temporal structure of storms. Adv Water Resour 29:827–842
Shiau JT (2006) Fitting drought duration and severity with two-dimensional copulas. Water Resour Manag 20:795–815. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-005-9008-9
Shiau JT, Wang HY, Tsai CT (2006) Bivariate frequency analysis of floods using copulas. J Am Water Resour Assoc 42:1549–1564
Song S, Singh VP (2010) Meta-elliptical copulas for drought frequency analysis of periodic hydrologic data. Stoch Env Res Risk A 24:425–444
Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional drought assessment based on the reconnaissance drought index (RDI). Water Resour Manag 21:821–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-006-9105-4
Vicente-Serrano SM, Beguería S, López-Moreno JI (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23:1696–1718. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009jcli2909.1
Xiao M, Zhang Q, Singh VP, Liu L (2016) Transitional properties of droughts and related impacts of climate indices in the Pearl River basin, China. J Hydrol 534:397–406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.01.012
Xiao MZ, Zhang Q, Singh VP, Chen XH (2017) Probabilistic forecasting of seasonal drought behaviors in the Huai River basin, China. Theor Appl Climatol 128:667–677
Xu K, Yang D, Xu X, Lei H (2015a) Copula based drought frequency analysis considering the spatio-temporal variability in Southwest China. J Hydrol 527:630–640. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.05.030
Xu K, Yang D, Yang H, Li Z, Qin Y, Shen Y (2015b) Spatio-temporal variation of drought in China during 1961–2012: a climatic perspective. J Hydrol 526:253–264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.09.047
Yan DH, Wu D, Huang R, Wang LN, Yang GY (2013) Drought evolution characteristics and precipitation intensity changes during alternating dry–wet changes in the Huang–Huai–Hai River basin. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 17:2859–2871. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-2859-2013
Yevjevich V (1967) Objective approach to definitions and investigations of continental hydrologic droughts. Hydrology Paper 23, Colorado State U, Fort Collins, Aug 1967 19 p, 9 fig, 1 tab, 12 ref
Yu M, Li Q, Hayes MJ, Svoboda MD, Heim RR (2014) Are droughts becoming more frequent or severe in China based on the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index: 1951–2010? Int J Climatol 34:545–558
Zhang L, Singh VP (2006) Bivariate flood frequency analysis using the copula method. J Hydrol Eng 11:150–164
Zhang Q, Xiao M, Singh VP, Li J (2012) Regionalization and spatial changing properties of droughts across the Pearl River basin, China. J Hydrol 472:355–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2012.09.054
Zhang Q, Xiao M, Singh VP, Chen X (2013) Copula-based risk evaluation of hydrological droughts in the East River basin, China. Stoch Env Res Risk A 27:1397–1406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-012-0675-9
Zhang Q, Xiao MZ, Singh VP, Liu L, Xu CY (2015) Observational evidence of summer precipitation deficit-temperature coupling in China. J Geophys Res-Atmos 120:120. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015jd023830
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC0402706, 2016YFC0402710); “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (2017B15514); China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M610292); and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41323001, 51539003, 41605043). The observed meteorological data was provided by the National Meteorological Information Center of China, at the website of http://data.cma.cn/data/cdcdetail/dataCode/SURF_CLI_CHN_MUL_DAY_V3.0.html. The last but not the least, we cordially thank the editor, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Graßl, and an anonymous reviewer for their professional comments and constructive suggestions which are greatly helpful for further improvement of the quality of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Xiao, M., Yu, Z. & Zhu, Y. Copula-based frequency analysis of drought with identified characteristics in space and time: a case study in Huai River basin, China. Theor Appl Climatol 137, 2865–2875 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02788-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02788-x