• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.471-479
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• 2018

This study analyzed the peak time of drought severity and drought period using meteorological and hydrological drought indices. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using rainfall data was used for meteorological drought and Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) and Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI) using streamflow data were used for the hydrological drought. This study was applied to the Cheongmicheon watershed which is a mixture area for rural and urban regions. The rainfall data period used in this study is 32.5 years (January of 1985~June of 2017) and the corresponding streamflow was simulated using SWAT. After the drought indices were calculated using the collected data, the characteristics of drought were analyzed by time series distribution of the calculated drought indices. Based on the results of the this study, it can be seen that hydrological drought occurs after meteorological drought. The difference between SDI and SPI peak occurrence time, difference in drought start date and average drought duration is greater than SSI and SPI. In general, SSI shows more severe than SDI. Therefore, various drought indices should be used at the identification of drought characteristics.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.45 no.9
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• pp.887-900
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• 2012

Drought is a non-negligible disaster of nature and it is mainly caused by rainfall shortage for a long time though there are many definitions of drought. 'Standard Precipitation Index' (SPI) that is widely used to express the level of meteorological drought intensity has a limit of not being able to consider the hydrological changes such as rainfall and evapotranspiration caused by climate change, because it does not consider the temperature-related variables other than the precipitation. Recently, however, 'Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index' (SPEI), a drought index of new concept which is similar to SPI but can reflect the effect of temperature variability as well as the rainfall change caused by climate variation, was developed. In this study, the changes of drought occurrence in South Korea were analyzed by applying SPEI for meteorological data (1973~2011) of 60 climate observatories under Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). As the result of application, both of SPI and SPEI showed the trend of deepening drought in spring and winter and mitigating drought in summer for the entire nation, with SPI showing greater drought intensity than SPI. Also, SPI and SPEI with 12 months of duration showed that severe droughts with low frequency of around 6 years are generally being repeated.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.65 no.3
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• pp.57-67
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• 2023

A flash drought is a rapid-onset drought that develops over a short period of time as weather and environmental factors change rapidly, unlike general droughts, due to meteorological abnormalities. Abnormally high evapotranspiration rates and rapid declines in soil moisture increase vegetation stress. In addition, crop yields may decrease due to flash droughts during crop growth and may damage agricultural and economic ecosystems. In this study, Flash Drought Intensity Index (FDII) based on soil moisture data from Gravity Recovery Climate Experiment (GRACE) was used to analyze flash drought. FDII, which is calculated using soil moisture percentile, is expressed by multiplying two factors: the rate of intensification and the drought severity. FDII was developed for domestic flash drought events from 2014 to 2018. The flash drought that occurred in 2018, Chungcheongbuk-do showed the highest FDII. FDII was higher in heat wave flash drought than in precipitation deficit flash drought. The results of this study show that FDII is reliable flash drought analysis tool and can be applied to quantitatively analyze the characteristics of flash drought in South Korea.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.37-48
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• 2018

The extreme 2017 spring drought affected a large portion of central and western South Korea, and was one of the most climatologically driest spring seasons over the 1961-2016 period of record. This drought was characterized by exceptionally low precipitation, with total precipitation from January to June being 50% lower than the mean normal precipitation (1981-2010) over most of western South Korea. In this study, for the quantitative drought impact analysis, the widely-used Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the statistical drought frequency are compared with observed meteorological characteristics and anomalies. According to the drought frequency analysis of monthly cumulative precipitation during January and May in 2017, Gyeonggi-do, Chungcheong-do, and Jeollanam-do areas showed more than drought frequency over 100 years. Gyeongsangnam-do area showed more than drought frequency over 200 years based on annual precipitation in 2017. The South Korean government (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) and Korea Rural Community Corporation (KRC)) have been operating a government-level drought monitoring system since 2016. Results from this study can be used to improve the drought monitoring applications of future drought events, as well as drought planning and preparedness in South Korea.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.95-105
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• 2021

Drought is a disaster that causes prolonged and wide scale damage. Recently, the severity and frequency of drought occurrences, and drought damage have been increased significantly due to climate change. As a result, a quantitative study of drought factors is needed to better understand and prevent future droughts. In the case of agricultural drought, several existing studies examine the economic damage caused by droughts and their causes, but these studies are not well suited to estimating crop-oriented agricultural drought damage and the factors that absolutely affect agricultural drought. This study determines which factors most affect agricultural drought. It examines meteorological factors and those related to agricultural water supplied by irrigation facilities. Rice paddy production per unit area is lower than the average from the last two years where agricultural drought occurred. We compare the relative frequency of agricultural drought impacts with irrigation facilities, effective reservoir storage, the number of water supply facilities, and the meteorological drought index such as Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). To identify factors that affect agricultural drought, we correlate rice paddy production anomalies with irrigation water supply for the past two years. There was a high positive correlation between rice paddy production and irrigation water usage, and there was a low or moderate negative correlation between rice paddy production anomalies compared to the average of the past two years and SPI. As a result, agricultural water supply by irrigation facilities was judged to be more influential than meteorological factors in rice paddy production. This study is expected to help local governments establish policies related to agricultural drought response.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.10
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• pp.619-629
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• 2023

Recent intensification of climate change has led to an increase in damages caused by droughts. Currently, in Korea, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is used as a criterion to classify the intensity of droughts. Based on the accumulated precipitation over the past six months (SPI-6), meteorological drought intensities are classified into four categories: concern, caution, alert, and severe. However, there is a limitation in classifying drought intensity solely based on precipitation. To overcome the limitations of the meteorological drought warning criteria based on SPI, this study collected emergency water supply damage data from the National Drought Information Portal (NDIP) to classify drought intensity. Factors of SPI, such as precipitation, and factors used to calculate evapotranspiration, such as temperature and humidity, were indexed using min-max normalization. Coefficients for each factor were determined based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA). The drought intensity based on emergency water supply was used as the dependent variable, and the coefficients of each meteorological factor determined by GA were used as coefficients to derive a new Drought Severity Classification Index (DSCI). After deriving the DSCI, cumulative distribution functions were used to present intensity stage classification boundaries. It is anticipated that using the proposed DSCI in this study will allow for more accurate drought intensity classification than the traditional SPI, supporting decision-making for disaster management personnel.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.145-159
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• 2019

A good number of drought indices have been introduced and applied in different regions for monitoring drought conditions, but some of those are region-specific and have limitations for use under other climatic conditions because of the inherently complex characteristics of drought phenomenon. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) indices are widely used all over the world, including Bangladesh. Although newly developed, studies have demonstrated The Effective Drought Index (EDI) to perform better compared to SPIs in some areas. This research examined the performance of EDI to the SPI for detecting drought events throughout 35 years (1981 to 2015) in Bangladesh. Rainfall data from 27 meteorological stations across Bangladesh were used to calculate the EDI and SPI values. Results suggest that the EDI can detect historical records of actual events better than SPIs. Moreover, EDI is more efficient in assessing both short and long-term droughts than SPIs. Results also indicate that SPI3 and the EDI indices have a better capability of detecting drought events in Bangladesh compared to other SPIs; however, SPI1 produced erroneous estimates. Therefore, EDI is found to be more responsive to drought conditions and can capture the real essence of the drought situation in Bangladesh. Outcomes from this study bear policy implications on mitigation measures to minimize the loss of agricultural production in drought-prone areas. Information on severity level and persistence of drought conditions will be instrumental for resource managers to allocate scarce resources optimally.

• Atmosphere
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.173-186
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• 2010

The impact of the precipitation has been focused on losses in social and economical sectors. However, as growing the concerns of the future water shortage caused by the climate change, the precipitation should be consider in various views for an effective planning in the water resource management. A precipitation case occurred from 20 to 21 April 2009 was recorded as a welcome rain because it reduced the severe drought continued in Korea from winter season of 2008. In this study, economic values of the event was calculated with positive aspects in various sectors. The estimation is based on four major parts such as a secure of water resources, the improvement of air quality, the decrease of forest fires, and the reduction of the drought impact. The water resources only considered inflow waters into dams and the reservoirs managed by Korean public institutions and their economic values accounts for 5.92 billion won. Decreases of four air pollutants($PM_{10}$, $NO_2$, CO, and $SO_2$) were considered as the positive effects of the rainfall and estimated 175.4 billion won. The preventive effect of the forest fire after the rainfall results in 0.48 billion won. Finally, the rainfall during the drought period is effective to reduce the social costs of 108.65 billion won. Although the economic values estimated in this study explain parts of the positive effects of the precipitation, it can help to develop a comprehensive and systematic valuation system for the whole process of the precipitation. For doing this, various rainfall types should be analyzed in social-economic terms including economics, environments and hydrology.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.21 no.spc
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• pp.80-89
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between SPI (Standardized Precipitation Index) meteorological drought and RDI (Reservoir Drought Index) agricultural drought for Geum river basin. Drought Indices was calculated by collecting data of precipitation and agricultural reservoir water storage rate from 2014 to 2016. To evaluated the correlation between meteorological and agricultural drought, the Pearson correlation and the Receiver Operation Characteristic (ROC) analysis were conducted to evaluate the correlation between meteorological and agricultural droughts. The SPI-6 and RDI showed the highest relationship with Pearson coefficient 0.606 and ROC hit rates 0.722 respectively, and the spatial occurrence patterns of drought using overlapped SPI-6 and RDI, the big differences between the 2 indices were occurred in the upstream areas of Miho stream and Nonsan stream from August to October 2015. The analysis using reservoirs specifications for areas where reservoir droughts occurred was conducted, and the areas showing severe drought of RDI were the reservoir areas having relatively small value of basin magnifying power (BMP). This means that a reservoir has the reaction capability for agricultural drought mainly depending on the reservoir BMP.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2005.09a
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• pp.65-65
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• 2005