Drought

University of Oklahoma/HyDROS
Module 3.3
Outline – Day 3

DEM PRACTICE
CALIBRATION PRACTICE
DROUGHT
• Drought observations
• Using hydrological model
outputs to monitor and forecast
drought
COBB CREEK EXAMPLE

Module 3.3 / Drought -2-

Drought

The same tools that give us flood forecasts can also

be used to monitor droughts

Look at rainfall, soil moisture and streamflow for

historical significance.
Probability

Droughts Floods

0 100

Soil Moisture (%)

Module 3.3 / Drought -3-
Standardized Precipitation Index

Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)

SPI = (Curr. Avg. Rain – Hist. Avg. Rain) / Hist. StdDev. Rain
• Typically computed over 30-, 60-, 90-, 180-, 365-day periods
• Could also be done seasonally (this may also produce the
best results)

We have started computing SPI using TRMM rainfall

over Namibia

Module 3.3 / Drought -4-

Standardized Precipitation Index

Loaded the TRMM monthly gridded precipitation data

(known as 3B43) into a MySQL database for historical
reference points

TRMM daily data (created by summing together 3-hourly

estimates from the 3B42 product) is loaded into MySQL for
generating the real-time estimates of SPI

Use MySQL triggers to compute 60-, 90-, 180- day averages

when new data is inserted

Use MySQL SELECT to compute SPI and a simple Perl

script to write out the gridded data for display

Module 3.3 / Drought -5-

Standardized Precipitation Index

SPI over southwestern Africa calculated for March 23rd, 2015 using TRMM data

Module 3.3 / Drought -6-

Standardized Precipitation Index

Time series of SPI for Windhoek, Namibia from TRMM data

Module 3.3 / Drought -7-
Standardized Soil Moisture Index

Standardized Soil Moisture Index (SSI)

SSI = (Curr. Avg. SoilMoist – Hist. Avg. SM) / Hist. StdDev SM
Compute this from model soil moisture in a historical rerun

Or in a few years you can try from NASA’s SMAP satellite

Soil moisture percentiles might be more useful

((Curr. Avg. SM – Hist. Avg. SM) / Hist. Avg. SM) * 100.0

Module 3.3 / Drought -8-

Standardized Soil Mositure Index

NOAA CPC Soil Moisture Percentiles

Module 3.3 / Drought -9-

Standardized Runoff Index

Standardized Runoff Index (SRI)

SRI = (Curr. Avg. Run. – Hist. Avg. Run.) / Hist. StdDev Run.
• Noticing a trend?

Compute this from historical rerun of hydrological

model OR from your record of streamflow gauge data

Module 3.3 / Drought - 10 -

Standardized Runoff Index

Example from NOAA CPC

Module 3.3 / Drought - 11 -

Summary

SPI is rainfall driven only

We do not need EF5 to compute it, only TRMM

SSI & SRI use information from the hydrologic models

In the future EF5 will be able to compute SSI and SRI for you

Finally, it is possible to do seasonal forecasts of

drought based on the U.S. Climate Forecast System
(CFS) or European Centre rainfall forecasts

Module 3.3 / Drought - 12 -

Coming Up….

The next module is

Cobb Creek Example

You can find it in your \EF5_training\presentations  

directory

Module 3.3 / Drought - 13 -