Chapter 26 - Analysis and prediction of meteorological drought using SPI index and ARIMA model in the Karkheh River Basin, Iran

Abstract

Drought prediction is very important in the planning and management of water resources. Karkheh River basin is one of the considerable water resources fields in Iran and it is located in western parts of Iran. In this chapter, using precipitation data of 7 meteorological stations from 1987 to 2014 and also applying Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) in 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 monthly time scales, dry periods were extracted and results were analyzed. Then forecasting of SPI3 time series was performed using AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models. The result showed that meteorological drought occurred in years 1988, 1990, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2010, and 2011 in the basin. The analysis also indicated that ARIMA (3,3,4) for Aran Station, ARIMA(1,2,3) for Polechehr Station, ARIMA (4,2,4) for Doabmerk Station, ARIMA (0,3,4) for Tang-siab Station, ARIMA (4,2,4) for Dehno Station, ARIMA (0,3,4) for Sarabseyed Ali Station, ARIMA (2,2,4) for Nazarabad Station selected as the appropriate models regarding the minimum corrected Akaike information criterion (AICC). Eventually, the results showed a fairly good agreement between observed and predicted data indicating the linear stochastic models can be used for forecasting of SPI3 time series.