Probabilistic forecasting of seasonal drought behaviors in the Huai River basin, China

The Huai River basin is one of the major supplier of agricultural products in China, and droughts have critical impacts on agricultural development. Good knowledge of drought behaviors is of great importance in the planning and management of agricultural activities in the Huai River basin. With the copula functions to model the persistence property of drought, the probabilistic seasonal drought forecasting models have been built in the Huai River basin. In this study, droughts were monitored by the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) with the time scales of 3, 6, and 9 months, and their composite occurrence probability has been used to forecast the seasonal drought. Results indicated that the uncertainty related to the predicted seasonal drought is larger when more severe droughts occurred in the previous seasons, and the severe drought which occurs in summer and autumn will be more likely to be persistent in the next season while the severe drought in winter and spring will be more likely to be recovered in the subsequent season. Furthermore, given the different drought statuses in the previous season, spatial patterns of the predicted drought events with the largest occurrence probability have also been investigated, and results indicate that the Huai River basin is vulnerable to the extreme drought in most parts of the basin, e.g., the severe drought in winter will be more likely to be persistent in spring in the central part of the southern Huai River basin. Such persistent drought events pose serious challenges for planning and management of agricultural irrigation, then results of the study will be valuable for the planning of crop cultivation or mitigation of the losses caused by drought in the Huai River basin, China.