Drought forecasting as an aid to irrigation water management

The climate of Hungary is very changeable. Sometimes there is more water than necessary, but very often it's not enough which causes many problems, especially in the agriculture. So it's very important in the practice for people concerned to know the actual hydrometeorological situation and the probability of drought before the beginning of the irrigation period. This paper contents a drought-forecasting method made for this purpose. The Palfai drought index is a relative number which is based on the sum of precipitation have been fallen down from last year's October and the depth of the groundwater (these are known at the time of making forecast) and takes into account the sum of precipitation falling down till the end of actual summer and the mean of temperature with their values belonging to different probabilities. These indexes can help the comparison of strength of drought one call take into account. The method worked out at the beginning of 1990s and practically have been applied in Hungary since 1995 using data of 68 PAI-stations. The forecast received by the different regional water authorities, Ministry of Agriculture and also the press (National Press Agency) are published by the National Water Authority.