TY - JOUR
T1 - A comprehensive approach to assess the hydrological drought of inland river basin in Northwest China
AU - Zhu, Nina
AU - Xu, Jianhua
AU - Li, Weihong
AU - Li, Kaiming
AU - Zhou, Cheng
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors.
PY - 2018/9/22
Y1 - 2018/9/22
N2 - How to measure and quantitatively assess hydrological drought (HD) in the inland river basins of Northwest China is a difficult problem because of the complicated geographical environment and climatic processes. To address this problem, we conducted a comprehensive approach and selected the Aksu River Basin (ARB) as a typical inland river basin to quantitatively assess the hydrological drought based on the observed data and reanalysis data during the period of 1980-2010. We used two mutual complementing indicators, i.e., the standardized runoff index (SRI) and standardized terrestrial water storage index (SWSI), to quantitatively measure the spatio-temporal pattern of HD, where the SRI calculated from the observed runoff data indicate the time trend of HD of the whole basin, while SWSI extracted from the reanalysis data indicate the spatial pattern of HD. We also used the auto-regressive distribution lag model (ARDL) to show the autocorrelation of HD and its dependence on precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), and soil moisture. The main conclusions are as follows: (a) the western and eastern regions of the ARB were prone to drought, whereas the frequency of drought in the middle of the ARB is relatively lower; (b) HD presents significant autocorrelation with two months' lag, and soil moisture is correlated with SWSI with two months' lag, whereas PET and precipitation are correlated with SWSI with 1 month' lag; (c) the thresholds of HD for annual PET, annual precipitation, and annual average soil moisture are greater than 844.05 mm, less than 134.52 mm, and less than 411.07 kg/m2, respectively. A drought early warning system that is based on the thresholds was designed.
AB - How to measure and quantitatively assess hydrological drought (HD) in the inland river basins of Northwest China is a difficult problem because of the complicated geographical environment and climatic processes. To address this problem, we conducted a comprehensive approach and selected the Aksu River Basin (ARB) as a typical inland river basin to quantitatively assess the hydrological drought based on the observed data and reanalysis data during the period of 1980-2010. We used two mutual complementing indicators, i.e., the standardized runoff index (SRI) and standardized terrestrial water storage index (SWSI), to quantitatively measure the spatio-temporal pattern of HD, where the SRI calculated from the observed runoff data indicate the time trend of HD of the whole basin, while SWSI extracted from the reanalysis data indicate the spatial pattern of HD. We also used the auto-regressive distribution lag model (ARDL) to show the autocorrelation of HD and its dependence on precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), and soil moisture. The main conclusions are as follows: (a) the western and eastern regions of the ARB were prone to drought, whereas the frequency of drought in the middle of the ARB is relatively lower; (b) HD presents significant autocorrelation with two months' lag, and soil moisture is correlated with SWSI with two months' lag, whereas PET and precipitation are correlated with SWSI with 1 month' lag; (c) the thresholds of HD for annual PET, annual precipitation, and annual average soil moisture are greater than 844.05 mm, less than 134.52 mm, and less than 411.07 kg/m2, respectively. A drought early warning system that is based on the thresholds was designed.
KW - Drought
KW - Evapotranspiration
KW - Northwest China
KW - Precipitation
KW - Runoff
KW - Soil moisture
KW - Terrestrial water storage
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85053837639
U2 - 10.3390/atmos9100370
DO - 10.3390/atmos9100370
M3 - 文章
AN - SCOPUS:85053837639
SN - 1598-3560
VL - 9
JO - Atmosphere
JF - Atmosphere
IS - 10
M1 - 370
ER -
