Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Spatial characteristics and temporal trends of meteorological and hydrological droughts in northwestern Iran

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Natural Hazards Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In recent years, droughts have become more intense and frequent in arid and semi-arid regions like Iran on the one hand, and water demand has been rising on the other hand and, as a result, their impacts are being aggravated. Therefore, the meteorological and hydrological droughts are receiving much more attention. This paper focused on the meteorological and hydrological drought characteristics for the overlapping periods of 3, 6, 9, and 12 months in northwestern Iran over the period of 1981–1982 to 2010–2011. The results showed that the majority of drought events over the reference periods were in the last 15 years from 1995–1996 to 2010–2011. Furthermore, the driest year based on the meteorological drought index was 2007–2008, while it was detected to be 2010–2011 based on the hydrological drought index. The Spearman’s rho and Kendall’s tau tests were used for the temporal trends analysis of the meteorological and hydrological droughts. The decreasing time series trends were more evident for the streamflow droughts index than for the standardized precipitation index series. In general, the results of the meteorological and hydrological drought trends showed that the study area suffered from the hydrological drought more than meteorological droughts. Moreover, the results revealed that the study area has become drier during the last three decades. Finally, the Spearman correlation analysis was applied to explore the relationships between meteorological and hydrological droughts which indicated a strong correlation between May–Jul-SPI series and the Jun–Aug-SDI series with a value of 0.65.

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
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Babayi A, Alijani A (2013) Spatial analyses of long-term droughts in the Iran. Investig Nat Geogr 3:1–12 (In Persian)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bates BC, Kundzewicz ZW, Wu S, Palutikof JP (eds) (2008) Climate change and water. Technical Paper of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva (210)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bazrafshan J, Hejabi S, Rahimi J (2014) Drought monitoring using multivariate standardized precipitation index (MSPI). Water Resour Manag 28:1045–1060

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chulsang Y, Daeha K, Tae-Woong K, Kyu-Nam H (2008) Quantification of drought using a rectangular pulses Poisson process model. J Hydrol 355:34–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dai A (2011) Drought under global warming: a review. WIREs Clim Change 2(1):45–65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Do-Woo K, Hi-Ryong B, Ki-Seon C (2009) Evaluation, modification, and application of the Effective Drought Index to 200-year drought climatology of Seoul, Korea. J Hydrol 378:1–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dracup JA, Lee KS, Paulson EG Jr (1980) On the definition of droughts. Water Resour Res 16(2):297–302

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duggins J, Williams M, Kim D, Smith E (2010) Change point detection in SPI transition probabilities. J Hydrol 388:456–463

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heim RR (2000) Drought indices: a review. In: Wilhite DA (ed) Drought: a global assessment, vol 1. Routledge, London and New York, pp 159–167

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim RR (2002) A review of twentieth-century drought indices used in the United States. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 83(8):1149–1165

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khan S, Gabriel HF, Rana T (2008) Standard precipitation index to track drought and assess impact of rainfall on water tables in irrigation areas. Irrig Drain Syst 22:159–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu L, Hong Y, Bednarczyk CN, Yong B, Shafer MA, Riley R, Hocker JE (2012) Hydro-climatological drought analyses and projections using meteorological and hydrological drought indices: a case study in Blue River Basin, Oklahoma. Water Resour Manag 26:2761–2779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKee TB, Doesen NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Preprints, 8th conference on applied climatology, 17–22 January, Anaheim, California, USA, pp 179–184

  • McKee TB, Doesen NJ, Kleist J (1995) Drought monitoring with multiple time scales. In: Proceedings of the ninth conference on applied climatology. American Meteorological Society, Boston, pp 233–236

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morid S, Smakhtin V, Moghaddasi M (2006) Comparison of seven meteorological indices for drought monitoring in Iran. Int J Climatol 26:971–985

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nalbantis I (2008) Evaluation of a hydrological drought index. Eur Water 23(24):67–77

    Google Scholar 

  • Nalbantis I, Tsakiris G (2009) Assessment of hydrological drought revisited. Water Resour Manag 23:881–889

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikbakht J, Tabari H, Hosseinzadeh Talaee P (2012) Streamflow drought severity analysis by Percent of Normal Index (PNI) in northwest Iran. Theor Appl Climatol. doi:10.1007/s00704-012-0750-7

    Google Scholar 

  • Patel NR, Chopra P, Dadhwal VK (2007) Analyzing spatial patterns of meteorological drought using standardized precipitation index. Meteorol Appl 14:329–336

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paulo AA, Pereira LS (2007) Prediction of SPI drought class transitions using Markov chains. Water Resour Manag 21:1813–1827

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raziei T, Saghafian B, Paulo AA, Pereira LS, Bordi I (2008) Spatial patterns and temporal variability of drought in western Iran. Water Resour Manag 23(3):439–455

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riebsame WE, Changnon SA, Karl TR (1991) Drought and natural resource management in the United States: impacts and implications of the 1987 reso drought. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, p 174

    Google Scholar 

  • Romm J (2011) The next dust bowl. Nature 478:450–451

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rossi G, Cancelliere A (2002) Early warning of drought: development of a drought bullettin for Sicily. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference “New trends in water and environmental engineering for safety and life: eco-compatible solutions for aquatic environments”. Capri, Italy, 24–28 June, pp 1–12

  • Smakhtin VU (2001) Low flow hydrology: a review. J Hydrol 240(3–4):147–186

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tabari H, Nikbakht J, Hosseinzadeh Talaee P (2013) Hydrological drought assessment in northwest Iran based on Streamflow Drought Index (SDI). Water Resour Manag 27:137–151

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tallaksen LM, Van Lanen HAJ (eds) (2004) Hydrological drought—processes and estimation methods for streamflow and groundwater. Developments in water sciences 48. Elsevier B.V., The Netherlands

    Google Scholar 

  • Tate EL, Gustard A (2000) Drought definition: a hydrological perspective. In: Voght JV, Somma F (eds) Drought and drought mitigation in Europe. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 23–48

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tigkas D, Vangelis H, Tsakiris G (2012) Drought and climatic change impact on streamflow in small watersheds. Sci Total Environ 440:33–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Huijgevoort MHJ, van Lanen HAJ, Teuling AJ, Uijlenhoet R (2013) Identification of changes in hydrological drought characteristics from a multi-GCM driven ensemble constrained by observed discharge. J Hydrol 512:421–434

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilhite DA, Glantz MH (1985) Understanding the drought phenomenon: the role of definitions. Water Int 10(3):111–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilhite DA, Hayes MJ, Svodoba MD (2000) Drought monitoring and assessment in the US. In: Voght JV, Somma F (eds) Drought and drought mitigation in Europe. Kluwers, Dordrecht

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang W (2010) Drought analysis under climate change by application of drought indices and copulas. M.Sc. thesis, civil and environmental engineering, Portland State University, pp 1–84

  • Yazdani S, Haghsheno M (2008) Drought management and recommended solutions on how to deal with droughts. Am Eurasian J Agric Environ Sci 2:64–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang B, Wu P, Zhao X, Wang Y, Wang J, Shi Y (2012) Drought Variation trends in different subregions of the Chinese Loess Plateau over the past four decades. Agric Water Manag 115:167–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Majid Kazemzadeh & Arash Malekian

Authors
  1. Majid Kazemzadeh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Arash Malekian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arash Malekian.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kazemzadeh, M., Malekian, A. Spatial characteristics and temporal trends of meteorological and hydrological droughts in northwestern Iran. Nat Hazards 80, 191–210 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1964-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1964-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation