Application of Signal Processing in Tracking Meteorological Drought in a Mountainous Region

Abstract

This study addresses the application of signal processing in the evaluation of meteorological drought associated with monthly precipitation time series. Several drought indices and a Haar wavelet decomposition (WD) with ten components are implemented in the evaluation of the monthly precipitation of a mountainous region called Mount Uludag in Turkey. Monthly precipitation time series in three meteorological stations at the summit and foothills are used. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is used at monthly, annual, and 12- and 48-month moving average time frames as the benchmark to investigate the drought patterns. The results obtained by the WD and SPI are then confirmed using the Z-score index (ZSI) at monthly and annual scales, together with the modified China Z-index (MCZI) and rainfall anomaly index (RAI) at a monthly scale. Changes in the moments of the distribution, correlation analysis, mutual information, and power spectrum are applied to investigate the nature of the relationship between the sequences of precipitation events in time and space. The temporal correlation analysis, together with the mutual information, showed that the system has a short-term memory with strong seasonality. Similarly, the power spectra depicted major seasonality at 1, 3, 5, 6, 12, 22, and 60 months in the precipitation time series. It is concluded that the recent drought events have an infrequent nature, which altered the sinusoidal patterns of the large-scale events. The SPI-48 and the WD showed that declines are strongly related to the large-scale cycles, but the decline patterns are more related to the station located at the mountain summit.