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An insight into the Palmer drought mechanism based indices: comprehensive comparison of their strengths and limitations

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Abstract

Considering the drawbacks of the original Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) in terms of its simplified hydrologic algorithm and spatio-temporal inconsistency, we compare six variants of PDSI derived from different combinations of two hydrologic algorithms and three standard processes so as to provide deep insights into the individual impacts of hydrological processing and standardization on final PDSI values as well as their combined effects. Investigations are conducted in whole Yellow River basin. On basis of 52 years’ (1961–2012) hydro-meteorological data, comprehensive analysis on multiple drought characteristics are carried out for each PDSI variant, combined with comparison of three crucial intermediate variables of PDSI. Results show that variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model based modification in the hydrologic accounting section significantly improve drought trends with more reasonable spatial distributions presented. For the statistical characteristics of drought areas and frequency, comparable performance is found between VIC-based modification and self-calibrating standard procedure-based modification, though they are derived from different mechanisms. However, in case of the coupling of these two modifications, indices derived from combined modifications perform poorly than single modification-based indices with unexpected high frequency of extreme events detected in certain regions. This reflects the complicated mechanism of PDSI and it is essential to propose an appropriate standardization to match the hydrological algorithm and further improve the performance of relevant drought index. With the crucial findings mentioned above, this study is promising to provide some theoretical supports and serve as a competent reference for future PDSI based researches.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Special Basic Research Fund for Methodology in Hydrology (Grant No. 2011IM011000) from the Ministry of Sciences and Technology, China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41201031), the National Key Technology R&D Program by Ministry of Sciences and Technology, China (Grant No. 2013BAC10B02), the 111 Project (Grant No. B08048) from the Ministry of Education and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, China, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Grant No. 2014B35814, Grant No. 2014B35914).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, No. 1 Xikang Road, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Yi Liu, Liliang Ren, Mingwei Ma, Fei Yuan & Shanhu Jiang

  2. College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Yi Liu, Liliang Ren, Mingwei Ma, Xiaoli Yang, Fei Yuan & Shanhu Jiang

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  1. Yi Liu
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  2. Liliang Ren
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  3. Mingwei Ma
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  6. Shanhu Jiang
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Correspondence to Liliang Ren.

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Liu, Y., Ren, L., Ma, M. et al. An insight into the Palmer drought mechanism based indices: comprehensive comparison of their strengths and limitations. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 30, 119–136 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-015-1042-4

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