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This study introduces two integrated methods to model the short- to long-term droughts in terms of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). In this regard, the monthly precipitation data from three stations located in different climates of Iran was used. Firstly, the capability of Random Forest (RF) and M5 Pruning tree (M5P) models were assessed for short- to long-term drought forecasting. Then, the impact of data multi-pre-processing on improving the models' efficiency was investigated. Therefore, inputs were serially decomposed via Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD). The most dominate subseries were selected based on their energy values and used as inputs of the RF and M5P. Furthermore, since the drought variable consists of two deterministic and stochastic sections and in the modeling process the stochastic part is not often considered, in the third step, the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model was applied for determining the random parts of the SPIs. Results showed that the integrated models led to better outcomes compared to the standalone models. The second and third steps increased the modeling accuracy up to 45% and 55%, respectively. Results showed that the distribution range of the Root Mean Square Errors (RMSE) criteria for the SPI-3 modeling decreased from 0.438–0.551 (in using raw data) to 0.184–0.26 (in using the integrated-GARCH model). Results showed that using the integrated-GARCH models, SPIs could be successfully simulated with considering only one input variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought is one of the severe natural disasters that has devastating effects on various parts of the environment. Therefore, spatiotemporal monitoring of drought using reliable methods is very important. In this study, using a new Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)-Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD)-Energy multi-scale approach, the efficiency of the new Soil Moisture to RainAdvanced SCATterometer (SM2RAIN-ASCAT) precipitation product was investigated in monitoring the spatiotemporal patterns of short- to long-term droughts for the Northwest part of Iran. In this regard, after validating the accuracy of the SM2RAIN-ASCAT datasets, a multi-scale method was developed based on the serial decomposition of the drought signals. The mean energy amounts of the obtained subseries were imposed into the K-means (K signifies the number of clusters) to identify the drought-prone regions. Results showed that the highest Correlation Coefficient (R) between SM2RAIN-ASCAT and in-situ observations are found at monthly time scales, in which 73% of the stations had R higher than 0.7. Investigating the reliability of this product for drought monitoring showed that for short- and mid-term timescales in 75% of the stations, the values of R were higher than 0.7. The applied methodology successfully showed the drought-prone regions and a direct relationship was found between energy and drought intensity. The capability of the applied methodology was verified via the CPC Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products and the obtained results proved the desirable performance of the SM2RAIN-ASCAT datasets. It was found that SOI, Nino3, and Nino3.4 had major effects on the drought index in the selected area, while AO had the least effect. The relationship between the LST and SPIs was negative, while there was a positive relationship between NDVI and SPIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of spatiotemporal variations of drought is an efficient method for implementing drought mitigation strategies and reducing its negative impacts. This study aimed to assess the spatiotemporal pattern of short- to long-term droughts for an area with different climates. Therefore, 31 stations located in Iran were selected and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) series with timescales of 3, 6, and 12 months were computed during the 1951-2016 period. A hybrid methodology including Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) and K-means methods was used for obtaining the SPIs time-frequency properties and multiscale zoning of the area. The energy amounts of the decomposed subseries via the MODWT were applied as inputs for K-means. Also, the statistics in drought features (i.e. drought duration, severity, and peak) were assessed and the results showed that shorter term droughts (i.e. SPI-3 and -6) were more frequent and severe in the northern parts where the lowest values were obtained for drought duration. It was observed that the regions with more droughts frequency had the highest energy values. For shorter term droughts a direct relationship was obtained between the energy values and the mean SPIs, drought severity, and drought peak, whereas an inverse relationship was obtained for longer term drought. It was found that increasing the degree of SPI led to more similarity between the stations of each cluster. Also, the homogeneity of stations for the SPI-12 was slightly higher than the SPI-3 and -6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beside in situ observations, satellite-based products can provide an ideal data source for spatiotemporal monitoring of drought. In this study, the spatiotemporal pattern of drought was investigated for the northwest part of Iran using ground- and satellite-based datasets. First, the Standardized Precipitation Index series were calculated via precipitation data of 29 sites located in the selected area and the CPC Merged Analysis of Precipitation satellite. The Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) was used for obtaining the temporal features of time series, and further decomposition was performed using Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) to have more stationary time series. Then, multiscale zoning was done based on subseries energy values via two clustering methods, namely the self-organizing map and K-means. The results showed that the MODWT-EEMD-K-means method successfully identified homogenous drought areas. On the other hand, correlation between the satellite sensor data (i.e. the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, the Vegetation Condition Index, the Vegetation Healthy Index, and the Temperature Condition Index) was evaluated. The possible links between central stations of clusters and satellite-based indices were assessed via the wavelet coherence method. The results revealed that all applied satellite-based indices had significant statistical correlations with the ground-based drought index within a certain period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate prediction of drought indices is a useful method to reduce its undesirable consequences. In this study, the workability of newly integrated hybrid forecasting approach based on Meta model and data processing methods was assessed for forecasting the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in districts with different climates. The short-, mid-, and long-term SPEIs series (i.e. timescale of 3, 9, and 24 month) were computed during the period of 1951–2019 for five sites located in Iran. In this regard, first temporal features of the SPEIs were broken down using Wavelet Transform (WT). Then, for obtaining features with higher stationary properties, Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) was applied to further decompose the obtained subseries. Finally, the most efficient subseries were selected and inserted to Meta model approaches [i.e. Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN), Kernel Extreme Learning Machine (KELM), and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR)] as inputs. Results showed that the proposed methods enhanced the models' capability between 35 to 45%. The capability of the proposed model was verified via Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) method. Results showed that the distribution range of the Root Mean Square Errors (RMSE) criteria for integrated methods decreased from 0.036–0.172 (in raw data) to 0.025–0.109 (in decomposed data). The Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis was used to assess the applied models dependability. Results showed that the integrated model with having values of 72.8% to 89.2% for the 95PPU indicator had an allowable degree of uncertainty in short- to long-tern drought modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, classical and proposed methods were used to investigate the monthly precipitation characteristics of 30 stations in the southeastern United States during 1968-2018. Maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) as preprocessing method and K-means clustering method were used. First, the monthly precipitation time series of stations were decomposed into several subseries using MODWT and considering db as the mother wavelet. Then, the energy values of theses subseries were calculated and used as inputs in K-means and radial basis functions (RBF) methods. The optimum number of clusters obtained for the considered stations in both classical and proposed methods was five clusters. In order to use the data as the input of the RBF method, the data correlation was evaluated by variogram. Based on the results of clustering and in accordance with the latitude and longitude variations of the stations, it was found that with increasing the energy of the clusters, the amount of precipitation in the stations decreased and vice versa. The silhouette coefficient of clustering for the classical method obtained was 0.3 and for the proposed method it was 0.8, which indicates better clustering of the selected area using the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]