From meteorological to hydrological drought using standardised indicators

Barker, Lucy; Hannaford, Jamie; Chiverton, Andrew; Svensson, Cecilia

doi:10.5194/hess-20-2483-2016

Cited by 424 publications

(448 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…SPEI and SSI series were calculated using a 6‐month accumulation period (SPEI‐6 and SSI‐6), which is commonly utilized to detect drought events at a seasonal scale (Barker, Hannaford, Chiverton, & Svensson, ; Guttmann, ; Hao, Singh, & Xia, ). For the detection of the influence of the ENSO, values of SPEI‐6 and SSI‐6 for April and October were used as representative of the austral summer (November to April) and winter (May to October) respectively.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observed trends and relationships between ENSO and standardized hydrometeorological drought indices in central Chile

Oertel

Meza

Gironás

2019

Hydrological Processes

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Droughts are natural phenomena that severely affect socio economic and ecological systems. In Chile, population and economic activities are highly concentrated in its central region (i.e. between latitudes 29 S and 40 S), which periodically suffers from severe droughts affecting agriculture, hydropower, and mining. Understanding the dynamics of droughts and large-scale atmospheric processes that influence the occurrence of dry spells is essential for forecasting and efficient early detection of drought events. Central Chile's climate is marked by a significant El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influence that might help to better characterize droughts as well as to identify the effects of ENSO on the spatial and temporal characteristics of meteorological and hydrological droughts in the region. We analysed the behaviour of the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI) time series for 6-month accumulation periods over the austral winter and summer seasons. Multiple linear regression (MLR) and Generalized Linear Models (GLM) showed a significant ENSO influence on dry events for SPEI-6 and SSI-6 during winter and summer. We found that the magnitude of correlation between ENSO and SPEI-6 has changed over the last decades becoming weaker in winter periods and increasing in spring summer periods. Increasing trends in meteorological and hydrological drought events were also identified, along all latitudes, with significant trends during winter in the southern latitudes, and during summer in the semi-arid and Mediterranean zones. These results indicate that drought mitigation actions and policies are necessary to overcome their adverse effects. Given the monthly persistence of ENSO and its relationship to drought indices, there are opportunities for drought monitoring and seasonal forecasting that could become part of national drought management systems.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observed trends and relationships between ENSO and standardized hydrometeorological drought indices in central Chile

Oertel

Meza

Gironás

2019

Hydrological Processes

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“…To characterize and monitor hydrological drought, streamflow indices were previously employed (e.g., VicenteSerrano et al, 2012;Lorenzo-Lacruz et al, 2013;Barker et al, 2016). As we are interested in the impact of rivers on groundwater level fluctuations, it is straightforward to consider river stages instead of streamflow.…”

Section: Srsimentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the spatiotemporal variability of groundwater levels of alluvial aquifers in different settings using drought indices

Haas

Birk

2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. To improve the understanding of how aquifers in different alluvial settings respond to extreme events in a changing environment, we analyze standardized time series of groundwater levels (Standardized Groundwater level Index -SGI), precipitation (Standardized Precipitation Index -SPI), and river stages of three subregions within the catchment of the river Mur (Austria). Using correlation matrices, differences and similarities between the subregions, ranging from the Alpine upstream part of the catchment to its shallow foreland basin, are identified and visualized.Generally, river stages exhibit the highest correlations with groundwater levels, frequently affecting not only the wells closest to the river, but also more distant parts of the alluvial aquifer. As a result, human impacts on the river are transferred to the aquifer, thus affecting the behavior of groundwater levels. Hence, to avoid misinterpretation of groundwater levels in this type of setting, it is important to account for the river and human impacts on it.While the river is a controlling factor in all of the subregions, an influence of precipitation is evident too. Except for deep wells found in an upstream Alpine basin, groundwater levels show the highest correlation with a precipitation accumulation period of 6 months (SPI6). The correlation in the foreland is generally higher than that in the Alpine subregions, thus corresponding to a trend from deeper wells in the Alpine parts of the catchment towards more shallow wells in the foreland.Extreme events are found to affect the aquifer in different ways. As shown with the well-known European 2003 drought and the local 2009 floods, correlations are reduced under flood conditions, but increased under drought. Thus, precipitation, groundwater levels and river stages tend to exhibit uniform behavior under drought conditions, whereas they may show irregular behavior during floods. Similarly, correlations are found to be weaker in years with little snow as compared with those with much snow. This is in agreement with typical aquifer response times over 1 month, suggesting that short events such as floods will not affect much of the aquifer, whereas a long-term event such as a drought or snow-rich winter will.Splitting the time series into periods of 12 years reveals a tendency towards higher correlations in the most recent time period from 1999 to 2010. This time period also shows the highest number of events with SPI values below −2. The SGI values behave in a similar way only in the foreland aquifer, whereas the investigated Alpine aquifers exhibit a contrasting behavior with the highest number of low SGI events in the time before 1986. This is a result of overlying trends and suggests that the groundwater levels within these subregions are more strongly influenced by direct human impacts, e.g., on the river, than by changes in precipitation. Thus, direct human impacts must not be ignored when assessing climate change impacts on alluvial aquifers situated in populated valleys.

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“…One of the most important natural controls on streamflow drought is catchment storage. To index this, we use a variation of the BFI that is predicted from properties of soil (HOST, acronym standing for Hydrology Of Soil Types) classes, the BFIHOST classification (Boorman et al, 1995). The BFIHOST ranges between 0 and 1, with lower values indicating responsive (impermeable) catchments and higher values less responsive (groundwater-fed) catchments.…”

Section: Study Area and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The approach has been applied in numerous iconic experimental studies to investigate land use impacts on river flow (e.g. review of Brown et al, 2005). However, the paired catchment concept can also be used to study human influences on streamflow, using existing gauging station networks, if appropriate "donor" natural catchments with similar flow regimes can be found for "target" catchments with known influences (as conducted in the case of urbanisation effects on floods; Prosdocimi et al, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human influences on streamflow drought characteristics in England and Wales

Tijdeman

Hannaford

Stahl

2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Human influences can affect streamflow drought characteristics and propagation. The question is where, when and why? To answer these questions, the impact of different human influences on streamflow droughts were assessed in England and Wales, across a broad range of climate and catchments conditions. We used a dataset consisting of catchments with near-natural flow as well as catchments for which different human influences have been indicated in the metadata ("Factors Affecting Runoff") of the UK National River Flow Archive (NRFA). A screening approach was applied on the streamflow records to identify human-influenced records with drought characteristics that deviated from those found for catchments with near-natural flow. Three different deviations were considered, specifically deviations in (1) the relationship between streamflow drought duration and the base flow index, BFI (specifically, BFIHOST, the BFI predicted from the hydrological properties of soils), (2) the correlation between streamflow and precipitation and (3) the temporal occurrence of streamflow droughts compared to precipitation droughts, i.e. an increase or decrease in streamflow drought months relative to precipitation drought months over the period of record. The identified deviations were then related to the indicated human influences. Results showed that the majority of catchments for which human influences were indicated did not show streamflow drought characteristics that deviated from those expected under near-natural conditions. For the catchments that did show deviating streamflow drought characteristics, prolonged streamflow drought durations were found in some of the catchments affected by groundwater abstractions. Weaker correlations between streamflow and precipitation were found for some of the catchments with reservoirs, water transfers or groundwater augmentation schemes. An increase in streamflow drought occurrence towards the end of their records was found for some of the catchments affected by groundwater abstractions and a decrease in streamflow drought occurrence for some of the catchments with either reservoirs or groundwater abstractions. In conclusion, the proposed screening approaches were sometimes successful in identifying streamflow records with deviating drought characteristics that are likely related to different human influences. However, a quantitative attribution of the impact of human influences on streamflow drought characteristics requires more detailed case-by-case information about the type and degree of all different human influences. Given that, in many countries, such information is often not readily accessible, the approaches adopted here could provide useful in targeting future efforts. In England and Wales specifically, the catchments with deviating streamflow drought characteristics identified in this study could serve as the starting point of detailed case study research.

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From meteorological to hydrological drought using standardised indicators

Cited by 424 publications

References 55 publications

Observed trends and relationships between ENSO and standardized hydrometeorological drought indices in central Chile

Observed trends and relationships between ENSO and standardized hydrometeorological drought indices in central Chile

Characterizing the spatiotemporal variability of groundwater levels of alluvial aquifers in different settings using drought indices

Human influences on streamflow drought characteristics in England and Wales

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