Trends of meteorological and hydrological droughts and associated parameters using innovative approaches

Abstract

Climate change and drought have profound effects on hydro-meteorological series. In addition to spatial, these effects could be on annual, seasonal, monthly, or daily temporal scales. In the literature, seasonal Mann-Kendall and Kendall Tau, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and Standardized Runoff Index are mostly used to detect seasonal effects (autumn, winter, spring, and summer), despite some restrictive assumption. Innovative Polygon Trend Analysis (IPTA) method developed from Innovative Trend Analysis (ITA) analyzes monthly effects on hydro-meteorological variables without restrictive assumptions. In this study, the IPTA method is revised and developed as Periodic Innovative Polygon Trend analysis (P-IPTA) to analyze hydro-meteorological series in periods of 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months instead of one-month duration. The method turns to the IPTA for one-month evaluations. Also, ITA method is improved by adding the frequencies for each drought classification (F-ITA). For the precipitation and water availability (Istanbul, Türkiye) and stream flow (Danube River, Romania) series, the P-IPTA method has been used in addition to the SPI, SPEI, and SDI methods to detect the trends in meteorological and hydrological droughts, and their associated parameters. There are generally decreasing trends, increasing drought frequencies, and decreasing wet event frequencies in the study areas. As the period lengths of the hydro-meteorological series increase, drought becomes more evident. Unlike these methods, the method results are consistent with the F-ITA SPI, SPEI, and SDI graphs and can give drought and wet periods. Similarly, the new P-IPTA method will enable researchers to investigate seasonal effects not only on hydro-meteorological series but also on any variable.