Agricultural Drought Indices - US Department of Agriculture

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Drought Monitoring in Spain Antonio Mestre Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) Abstract Peninsular Spain is located in a geographical area that represents a transition zone between climatic regions influenced by polar and subtropical atmospheric circulation. In all regions of Spain, there is a high recurrence of drought events, which in some cases have greatly affected the activity of various productive sectors and caused important economic losses and severe environmental damage. The longest drought spell of the last 75 years was from 1991 to 1995, and it affected the southern half of Spain. The drought monitoring system of AEMET, based on the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), has been developed and applied to two of the recent droughts episodes (with quite different characteristics), and the system’s capacity of diagnosis has been made clear, especially in long-lasting episodes ending in hydrological droughts. Soil moisture estimation is an important tool for decision making in different sectors, particularly for farmers (evaluation of irrigation needs, soil workability, drought assessment, and early warning), forestry services (forest fire risk assessment and controlled burning authorization), and hydrology. Hence AEMET developed a 0.2º resolution gridded national water balance in 1997 aimed at providing a daily assessment of soil moisture conditions in order to meet the specific needs of the different users. At present, the drought monitoring program is being operationally carried out at AEMET on a national level. The operational application allows the monthly generation of a set of graphics and tabulated products related to the SPI for periods ranging from 1 month to 3 years. These applications are described with suitable examples. Introduction Drought is a complex climatic phenomenon. Because of the accumulation, in a gradual process through time, of its impacts on several sectors (e.g., agriculture and hydrological resources), its limits are not easy to establish. Usually drought impacts last for a long time after the end of the meteorological episode. From an operational point of view, drought can be approached from several perspectives (each one taking into account different social, economic, biological, and physical factors) and concepts (meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and structural droughts). Even considering just meteorological drought, the quantification of its intensity level is quite complex, taking into account that it depends not only on the precipitation deficit with respect to the climatic average, but also on its temporal and spatial extent. To characterize meteorological drought, several indices have been developed (Heim 2000). Among them, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) (McKee et al. 1993, McKee et al. 1995) has been increasingly used since its formulation, to the point of progressively becoming a reference at a global level. The main advantages of this index are its operational simplicity, its ability to quantify and compare precipitation deficit intensity between zones of a varied range of climates, and, overall, the fact that it is possible to integrate it over a wide range of time scales. This last characteristic makes it useful as an indicator of different type of droughts: short-period episodes that affect the agricultural, forestry, and cattle sectors, and long-lasting episodes causing hydrological droughts. Drought in Spain Peninsular Spain is located in a geographical area that represents a transition zone between climatic regions influenced by polar and subtropical atmospheric circulation. Because of this frontier situation, the precipitation regime is highly dependent on small latitudinal shifts of the Atlantic low pressure system trajectories associated with the northern hemisphere’s circumpolar vortex, especially to the south of the Cordillera Cantábrica. When the low pressure systems follow high latitude trajectories, their associated high pressure systems tend to extend over southwestern 95
Europe around the Iberian Peninsula, causing a dramatic decrease in precipitation. Sometimes this synoptical situation is persistent and provokes long periods of drought. Figures 1, 2, and 3 represent a series of annual precipitation volumes over the peninsular Spanish basins (Cantabrian, Atlantic, and Mediterranean). They show the high variability of the annual precipitation amount in Spain, as well as the irregular occurrence of drought cycles, the highly variable duration of droughts, and an average periodicity of 3-5 years. As a consequence of this high precipitation variability, numerous episodes of severe meteorological drought have occurred. Several drought episodes affected extended areas of Spain during the first 30 years of the last century, the late 1940s, and 1957-58. After the precipitation maximum of the 1960s, a gradual decrease in the amount of precipitation took place, with a severe drought episode between 1981 and 1983, and another at the end of the 1980s, especially in the peninsular northern part. This decreasing bias culminated with a long-lasting severe drought, which took place at the beginning of the 1990s and affected the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Between 1990 and 1995, in extended areas, 5 dry or very dry consecutive hydrological years followed one another (Peral et al. 2000). From 1996 to 2004, a general wet cycle occurred, although interrupted by dry years (1998- 99, 1999-2000, 2001-2002). In November 2004, a new period of meteorological drought began, which lasted along the hydrological year 2004-2005 and resulted in the driest hydrological year since 1947 (the year that measurement of average precipitation over the main river basins began to be done in a systematic way) (Mestre 2005). More recently, a drought period occurred in the first half of the hydrological year 2007-2008. Its first semester was the driest of the whole series, although that rain deficit was later compensated by the abundant precipitation of spring 2008. The National Water Balance of AEMET Soil moisture estimation is an important tool for decision making in different sectors, particularly for farmers (evaluation of irrigation needs, soil workability, drought assessment, and early warning), forestry services (forest fire risk assessment and controlled burning authorization), and hydrology. Hence AEMET developed a 0.2º resolution gridded national water balance in 1997 aimed at providing a daily assessment of soil moisture conditions in order to meet the specific needs of the different users. The main features of the water balance are described below (Navarro and Picatoste 1998, Mestre and Moreno 2004). Series of annual precipitation volume over the northern Spanish basins 120000 100000 Volume ( Hm3) 80000 60000 40000 20000 0 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Year Figure 1. Precipitation variability in Spain; series of annual precipitation over the northern basins (period: 1947-2008). 96
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Agricultural Drought Indices Procee
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© World Meteorological Organizatio
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Preface With the world population p
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Segura River Basin: Spanish Pilot R
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Table 3. Segura River Basin resourc
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Figure 5. Segura River Basin water
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Drought Indicator Expression After
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Table 5. Analysis of drought impact
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Even with this drought action plan
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that complicates water management b
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Understanding the nature of the haz
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Figure 2. U.S. Drought Monitor for
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Summary Drought is a creeping pheno
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Agricultural Drought—WMO Perspect
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c) CAgM-VI (Washington, USA, 1974)
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an unusually large moisture demand.
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the-clock nature of WIGOS, the anal
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and temporal variations in drought
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Support to Regional Institutions WM
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Williams, M.A.J. and R.C. Balling,
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The day after Black Sunday, an Asso
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Meteorological research at these in
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United States is sent to the Secret
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Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI
Page 51 and 52: PDSI as an operational index since
Page 53 and 54: WAOB, GIS has become an important t
Page 55 and 56: USDM as the official criteria for F
Page 57 and 58: Monitoring Drought Risks in India w
Page 59 and 60: areas recording large incidences of
Page 61 and 62: The analysis revealed that out of 1
Page 63 and 64: Figure 3. Aridity anomaly chart of
Page 65 and 66: Figure 5. Progression of surface we
Page 67 and 68: Agricultural Drought Indices in Cur
Page 69 and 70: Meteorological and Agricultural Dro
Page 71 and 72: Palmer Drought Severity Index Adapt
Page 73 and 74: Accumulated WD and WS April 2010 Ac
Page 75 and 76: Soil Water Storage (SWS) September
Page 77 and 78: hydrological characteristics, and c
Page 79 and 80: Agricultural Drought Indices in Cur
Page 81 and 82: application of drought indices has
Page 83 and 84: The Value of Crop and Pasture Simul
Page 85 and 86: To assist, many agriculturally-spec
Page 87 and 88: change in Australia. The PDSI provi
Page 89 and 90: Mpelasoka, F.S., M.A. Collier, R. S
Page 91 and 92: supply and demand are fully taken i
Page 93 and 94: In Germany, the Deutsche Wetterdien
Page 95 and 96: creation of a system of European su
Page 97 and 98: The second index is extracted from
Page 99 and 100: Figure 7. Standardized Soil Water I
Page 101: References Durand, Y., E. Brun, L.
Page 105 and 106: The incoming rainwater and the atmo
Page 107 and 108: Figure 6. Example of SPI map for a
Page 109 and 110: The 1991-95 Drought Episode A long-
Page 111 and 112: adverse climatic impacts on agricul
Page 113 and 114: Agricultural Drought Indices in the
Page 115 and 116: efers to deficiencies in surface an
Page 117 and 118: Figure 5. Time series of standardiz
Page 119 and 120: Limitations of Agricultural Drought
Page 121 and 122: Incorporating a Composite Approach
Page 123 and 124: Figure 3. Daily gridded SPI by regi
Page 125 and 126: The North American Drought Monitor:
Page 127 and 128: process (a) emulates natural cycles
Page 129 and 130: Summary Given the complexity that d
Page 131 and 132: alance models cannot be applied for
Page 133 and 134: 60 50 40 Error 30 20 Systematic Err
Page 135 and 136: In Figure 4, examples of the normal
Page 137 and 138: Figure 7. Water balance for Brazil,
Page 139 and 140: The soil water balance module in th
Page 141 and 142: Water Balance as a Tool for Agricul
Page 143 and 144: Conclusions The topics discussed pr
Page 145 and 146: Use of Crop Models for Drought Anal
Page 147 and 148: The parameters used in crop simulat
Page 149 and 150: a model for cassava and potato (Tsu
Page 151 and 152: ackground. The system’s most impo
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management. In research, however, p
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Smajstrla, A.G. 1990. Technical Man
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Monitoring Regional Drought Conditi
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Figure 2 represents the regression
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Conclusions and Discussion Several
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Experiences During the Drought Peri
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During the years 2007 and 2008, for
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Figure 6. Management simulation mod
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Figure 9. Irrigation diversions in
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References Andreu, J., Ferrer Polo,
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Table 2. MERIS spectral bands MDS N
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Figure 6. Spanish NSDIE during 2008
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References Gu, Y., J. F. Brown, J.
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Agricultural Drought Indices: Summa
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Table 1. Agricultural drought indic
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Accumulated Rainfall Deficits In an
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Heim (2002) notes that as recently
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each calendar day in the base perio
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The purpose of the climatic charact
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to compare moisture conditions at d
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Table 6. Overview of different drou
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have been adopted because of the av
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TCI = 100 (T max - T) / (T max - T
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Figure 1. The February 8, 2011, US
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8) There is a universal interest in
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Mavromatis, T. 2007. Drought index
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