Sensitivity of drought indices depending on the length of climatological records
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24850/j-tyca-2025-06-09Keywords:
Uncertainty due to drought, estimation error, meteorological drought indices, precipitation, evapotranspiration, probabilistic analysisAbstract
Among the various drought estimators proposed worldwide, there is not enough evaluation as to which of them presents the least uncertainty when applied in a region. Some indices have been used in territories with specific geomorphology and climatic regimes, as well as certain availability of meteorological information. Generally, there are short time series of the required meteorological variables, ignoring the drought estimation error associated with that length of series. This work presents a facilitating process to evaluate the sensitivity of meteorological drought indices based on the available information. Sensitivity was classified as excellent, good, medium and poor, according to the estimation error of the indices with respect to synthetic series of one thousand years. The synthetic series were generated from the characteristics of the real sample and the normal and gamma distribution functions. The results identified that the CPI, PNI, RDI, SPI, SPEI and ZI indices are not very sensitive to the extent of meteorological records. In particular, SPEI is no longer sensitive above 10-year record periods; CPI, PNI, RDI, SPI and ZI for 20 years. The EDI was more sensitive to the length of the series and required records of more than 30 years to improve its certainty. Finally, the reliability of the indices was greater for the daily synthetic series of P, Tmax and Tmin generated with the normal distribution function, as well as in areas with higher annual P.
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