See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/321624505

Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

Article  in  Water Resources Management · February 2018

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-017-1855-7

CITATIONS READS

30 397

4 authors:

Abdelaaziz Merabti Mohamed Meddi

Saad Dahlab University Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Hydraulique
9 PUBLICATIONS   74 CITATIONS    274 PUBLICATIONS   2,170 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Diogo S Martins L. S. Pereira

University of Lisbon University of Lisbon
25 PUBLICATIONS   503 CITATIONS    458 PUBLICATIONS   50,209 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Assessment, management, protection and water resources modeling View project

Etude des Crues dans la Région de Nord Ouest Algérien View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Abdelaaziz Merabti on 02 March 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Water Resour Manage
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1855-7

Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale

as Influenced by Climate

Abdelaaziz Merabti 1 & Mohamed Meddi 1 &

Diogo S. Martins 2 & Luis S. Pereira 3

Received: 12 June 2017 / Accepted: 2 November 2017

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2017

Abstract Drought and wetness events were studied in the Northeast Algeria with SPI
and RDI. The study area includes a variety of climatic conditions, ranging from humid in
the North, close to the Mediterranean Sea, to arid in the South, near the Sahara Desert.
SPI only uses precipitation data while RDI uses a ratio between precipitation and
potential evapotranspiration (PET). The latter was computed with the Thornthwaite
equation, thus using temperature data only. Monthly precipitation data were obtained
from 123 rainfall stations and monthly temperature data were obtained from CFSR
reanalysis gridded temperature data. Both data sets cover the period 1979–80 to 2013–
14. Using ordinary kriging, the gridded temperature data was interpolated to all the
locations having precipitation data, thus providing to compute SPI and RDI with the
same observed rainfall data for the 3-, 6- and 12-month time scales. SPI and RDI were
therefore compared at station level and results and have shown that both indices revealed
more sensitive to drought when applied in the semi-arid and arid zones. Differently, more
wetness events were detected by RDI in the more humid locations. Comparing both
indices, they show a coherent and similar behavior, however RDI shows smaller differ-
ences among climate zones and time-scales, which is an advantage relative to the SPI
and is likely due to including PET in RDI.

Keywords Drought indices . Potential evapotranspiration . CFSR reanalysis products .

Northeastern Algeria . Climate variability . Global warming

* Luis S. Pereira
lspereira@isa.ulisboa.pt; luis.santospereira@gmail.com

1
Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Hydraulique de Blida, Laboratoire GEE, Blida, Algeria
2
Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
3
LEAF - Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food, Instituto Superior de Agronomia,
Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
 Merabti A. et al.

1 Introduction

Drought is a natural phenomenon with harmful effects to ecosystems and human related
activities, mainly agriculture. Considering an increased water demand by various economic
sectors and that climate change impacts exacerbate water scarcity, understanding drought
spatial and temporal variability is of great importance for drought prone countries (Tsakiris
2017) such as Algeria. Drought can be defined as a natural but temporary imbalance of water
availability, consisting of persistent lower-than-average precipitation of uncertain frequency,
duration and severity, of unpredictable or difficult to predict occurrence, resulting in dimin-
ished water resources availability and carrying capacity of the ecosystems (Pereira et al. 2009).
Various studies focused on droughts at the Mediterranean scale. Spinoni et al. (2014)
reported a significant increase in drought frequency, duration, and severity in Mediterranean
region. Giorgi and Lionello (2008), in a previous study on climate change impacts in the
Mediterranean basin, reported on a pronounced decrease in precipitation associated with
noticeable warming, mainly in the summer season. This drying condition is reported to be
due to Bincreased anti-cyclonic circulation that yields increasingly stable conditions and is
associated with a northward shift of the Atlantic storm track^. Moreover, Giorgi and Lionello
(2008) suggested that the Mediterranean might be a highly vulnerable region to global change.
Therefore, it is likely that droughts will affect this region as influenced by the referred
increased dryness as reported by studies referred hereafter.
Sousa et al. (2011) computed the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the Self
Calibrated PDSI (scPDSI) with data for the twentieth century in a number of Mediterranean
locations. A trend towards drier conditions during the twentieth century in most western and
central Mediterranean regions was identified. Despite the wide scale of the analysis, that study
allowed to detect a trend for increased dryness in NW Algeria but not in the northeastern
region. These authors identified the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) as the main driver of the
scPDSI pattern in western and central Mediterranean areas, highly relevant in winter and
important during the following spring and summer. The Scandinavian Pattern was also
significant over central Mediterranean. Weiß et al. (2007) reported that drought severity is
expected to increase much more in the northern Mediterranean relative to the southern areas.
Hoerling et al. (2012), using climate change model predictions for the Mediterranean basin,
also identified an increased drying, mainly in NW, as influenced by NAO.
Using tree-ring data, Nicault et al. (2008) reconstructed the PDSI values for 500 years in the
Mediterranean basin. Results highlighted multi-decadal PDSI variations in the central and
western parts of the Mediterranean but less clear low frequency changes in the east. The 16th
and the first part of the 17th centuries were marked by dry episodes in the west similar to those
observed by the end of the twentieth century. Relative to the eastern part of the Mediterranean,
the heavy drought period observed by the end of last century was considered the strongest of
the last 500 years. Touchan et al. (2008) also reconstructed a long series of PDSI (1456–2002)
focusing on northwestern Africa with results in agreement with those reported before. More-
over, those authors considered that a transition to more arid mid-latitude conditions is
developing, also in agreement with predictions by general circulation models. Their results
were confirmed by a second study (Touchan et al. 2011) where the reconstruction went to 1179
over the Maghreb countries, which shows a shift toward dryer conditions. In line with studies
referred above, Saadi et al. (2015) reported about predicted changes in precipitation, temper-
ature and grass reference evapotranspiration, ETo, in the Mediterranean basin and predicted
important impacts on wheat cropping patterns, a typical rain-fed crop that likely needs
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

irrigation in future. Similarly, Tanasijevic et al. (2014) identified impacts on the olive crop, that
should become irrigated while today it still is often rain-fed. Therefore, it is important to
recognize how droughts behave in order to detect main impacts, namely affecting water
scarcity in the Mediterranean basin, particularly in the less studied northeastern Algeria.
Northern Algeria has been focused on various rainfall and drought studies, however mostly
dedicated to the northwestern areas and rarely to NE Algeria. Various authors (Meddi et al.
2010; Hamlaoui-Moulai et al. 2013; Taibi et al. 2017; Zeroual et al. 2017) have reported on a
decrease in precipitation totals in NW Algeria. Zeroual et al. (2017) also reported on an
increased warming. A marked decrease in average monthly streamflows in northern Algeria
was referred by Zeroual et al. (2013) as a consequence of decreased rainfall. Spatial analysis
studies have identified the longitude, the distance from the Mediterranean Sea and the
topography as important factors influencing rainfall variability (Meddi et al. 2013), and also
identified NAO and the Mediterranean Oscillation (MO) as the main driving patterns influenc-
ing that variability. Both NAO and MO were also identified by Tramblay et al. (2013) as
causing an increase of duration and magnitude of dry episodes, with a decrease of annual
precipitation and in the number of wet days.
Several indices have been proposed and used to appropriately identify and analyze
droughts, namely relative to severity, intensity, duration and spatial extent (Keyantash and
Dracup 2002; Paulo and Pereira 2006; Mishra and Singh 2010; Zargar et al. 2011;Tsakiris
2017), as well as for drought prediction and/or to assess impacts of climate change. The most
commonly used drought index is the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI; McKee et al.
1993), which is a normalized index for calculating the deviation from the normal precipitation
conditions. The SPI only requires monthly precipitation data is easy to compute and because it
is standardized, can be easily compared among periods or regions. Moreover, it can be
computed for different time scales, which represent various types of drought: shorter time
scales are used to assess meteorological droughts, SPI3- and 6-month time scales are often
used for agricultural droughts, while larger time scales, such as 12- or 24-month, are more
suitable to describe hydrological and water resources droughts (Mishra and Singh 2010). The
SPI is based on the probability of precipitation cumulated for any time scale. The probability of
the observed precipitation is then transformed into an index that supports assessing drought
severity and may provide for early warning of drought or for assessing climate changes
influences (Bordi et al. 2004, 2009; Paulo and Pereira 2007; Moreira et al. 2008, 2016).
However, SPI has limitations, namely because evapotranspiration is not considered and the
selected calibration period may play an important role when dealing with non-stationary
precipitation time-series, likely influenced by climate change (Paulo et al. 2016).
Other indices include the effect of potential evapotranspiration (PET) in addition to
precipitation: the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI; Palmer 1965), which is com-
puted through a soil water balance approach, and the Reconnaissance Drought Index
(RDI; Tsakiris et al. 2007) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index
(SPEI, Vicente-Serrano et al. 2010), which use PET without performing the soil water
balance. Both indices use a probabilistic computational procedure similar to the SPI, are
normalized in terms of drought severity and may be computed with various time scales
as the SPI. More recently, Tsakiris et al. (2016) developed a new approach with RDI for
coupling the drought severity and areal extend using a 2D Archimedean Copulas
approach. Considering climate change effects, studies show that PET should not be
ignored in drought assessment, which supports the use of indices that include both
rainfall and evapotranspiration.
 Merabti A. et al.

Several recent studies refer to the use of RDI. Banimahd and Khalili (2013) found that the RDI
behaved quite uniformly for areas having different climates and for various time scales. Differently,
Zarei et al. (2016) reported that using the RDI for short time scales a trend to increase of drought
occurrence and severity in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran was identified. Zarch et al. (2011)
reported on the good correlation between SPI and RDI, particularly when using the time scales of 3,
6 and 9 months rather than longer ones, and that SPI and RDI compared well for all areas where
applied. Shokoohi and Morovati (2015) found that both SPI and RDI performance in drought
recognition matched in many cases but RDI was more sensitive to severe drought. Zarch et al.
(2015) used RDI in a worldwide scale, covering a variety of climates, and found that the agreement
between SPI and RDI reduced from the hyper-arid climates toward the humid ones. They reported
that in semi-arid, sub-humid and humid zones the indices showed different trends, with RDI
exhibiting more decreasing ones. Zarch et al. (2015) also concluded that different trends but
coherent results of SPI and RDI favours adopting both indices in drought studies. Nevertheless,
studies on RDI are lacking for central and western Mediterranean areas.
The RDI computation follows a procedure similar to SPI but applied to the time series of
the monthly ratio of P/PET instead of solely monthly precipitation. The RDI adopts the same
drought classification as SPI. The PET Thornthwaite’s equation (Thornthwaite 1948) is often
used because it is a purely climatic equation depending only from temperature; the FAO56
grass reference evapotranspiration (ETo, Allen et al. 1998), that represents the evaporative
demand of the atmosphere, is also often adopted. However, the selected equation has minor
impacts on the index values (Vangelis et al. 2013; Mohammed and Scholz 2017) that, instead,
may be influenced by the type and quality of available data as analyzed by Allen et al. (1998).
Khalili et al. (2011) reported that when PET was computed with the FAO ETo equation (Allen
et al. 1998) the RDI was very sensitive to climatic variability, which authors considered useful
in drought analyses focusing on agricultural applications. Tigkas et al. (2012) successfully
analyzed streamflow variation with RDI in Greece.
The above reviewed current knowledge on drought and climate change in the Mediterranean
basin and northern Algeria in particular clearly shows that drought studies relative to NE Algeria are
lacking and applications of RDI to Central and western Mediterranean regions are not yet reported
in literature. It may therefore be considered that the study of droughts in NE Algeria using RDI is
innovative. Hence the main objectives of this paper consist of comparing SPI and RDI when
characterizing drought in northeastern Algeria taking into consideration the quite diverse climates of
the region and using the 3-, 6- and 12-month time scales. The spatial and time variability of droughts
using the same indices and data are presented in a companion paper (Merabti et al. 2017).

2 Material and Methods

2.1 Study Area

The northeastern Algeria extends between the longitudes of 3°15′6″E to 8°40′10″E and the
latitudes of 37°5′00″N and 34°32′30″N, covering about 109,000 km2 (Fig. 1). It develops from
the Mediterranean coast and the highlands of the Tellian Atlas in the north to the Saharian Atlas
and the southern plains bordering the Sahara desert in the south. Consequently, precipitation is
highly variable in the region, from above 1700 mm year−1 in the coastal area to about 150 mm
year−1 in the southern plains (Fig. 2a). It varies with the proximity to the Mediterranean Sea, the
site elevation and the exposure to the NW winds, which carry most of rainfall.
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

Fig. 1 Relief map of the study area with location of rainfall stations used and isolines of the aridity index that
separate main climatic areas

Monthly precipitation data from 123 rainfall stations were derived from records of the
National Hydraulic Resources Agency (NHRA, www.anrh.dz/) for the hydrological years of

Fig. 2 Spatial distribution of (a) the mean annual precipitation and (b) the Aridity Index
 Merabti A. et al.

1960–61 to 2013–14. The precipitation records with missing values were filled using the
Hydrolab software (Laborde and Mouhous 2006), which is based on principal component
analysis to categorize stations with similar precipitation patterns and thus to be used for filling
the gaps and maintaining the series statistical characteristics. Records had less than 10% of
missing monthly values in the selected study period. The precipitation data were tested for
homogeneity using the Wilcoxon sequential test (Karl and Williams 1987). 22 out of the 123
stations were not considered homogenous, hence the precipitation series were corrected using
the double and the cumulative residuals methods (Allen et al. 1998) using the neighboring
stations with homogenous data identified as referred above. The representation of the spatial
distribution of the annual precipitation is shown in Fig. 2a.
The Thornthwaite equation (Thornthwaite 1948) was used to compute PET, hence
using temperature data only. Thus, 84 grid-points with monthly temperature data of
the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR; Saha et al. 2010) were used with data
of the hydrological years of 1979–80 to 2013–14. The CFSR reanalysis data is based
on both historical and operational archives of observations and newly reprocessed sets
of observations produced at meteorological research centers around the world. CFSR
assimilates observations from upper air balloon, aircraft and satellite observations and
has a spatial resolution of approximately 38 km. Various studies compared CFSR
against observations (Fuka et al. 2014; Dile and Srinivasan 2014; Mohammed and
Scholz 2017; Worqlul et al. 2017), which support further uses of this reanalysis
dataset as for the current study. The 84 grid-points of monthly temperature were
interpolated to the 123 sites where precipitation was observed, hence SPI and RDI
used the same sets of precipitation data referring to the same locations. Considering
that kriging is likely the most accurate method for interpolation of drought indices
(Akhtari et al. 2009), Ordinary Kriging was used for that interpolation with consid-
eration of altitude effects.
To further understand climate variability in NE Algeria, the UNEP aridity index (AI; UNEP
1997) was used to characterize the climate at every weather station. This index is the ratio between
the mean annual precipitation and the mean annual Thornthwaite’s PET relative to the 34 years of
data. The AI index shows a pattern with aridity increasing from north to south (Fig. 2b), i.e., from the
coastal area to the border of Sahara Desert. Using the Köppen-Geiger climate classification (Kottek
et al. 2006), the NE Algeria zone comprises three different climates: warm temperate with a warm
and dry summer (Csb) in the northern part, including the mountainous area; arid of steppe type and
cold arid (BSk) in the southern mountainous area; and arid of desert type and hot arid (Bwh) in the
southern plains. This classification agrees with that of aridity using AI (Fig. 2b).

2.2 Drought Indices

Two drought indices, SPI and RDI, were considered to characterize droughts in the NE Algeria and
to detect the main spatial and temporal patterns of drought variability in the region. Both indices
were briefly reviewed in the Introduction. They are multiscalar indices, thus can be computed for
different time scales, and are normalized, so allowing to be compared for different regions and
periods. The classification of the severity of drought/wetness events is mild, moderate, severe and
extreme with SPI taking, respectively, the values 0 to −0.99/0 to 0.99, −1.00 to −1.49/1.0 to 1.49,
−1.50 to −1.99/1.50 to 1.99, and ≤ –2.00/≥ 2.00 (McKee et al. 1993).
The calculation of the SPI for any time scale k (3-, 6- and 12-month in the current study)
requires the following steps (McKee et al. 1993; Guttman 1999):
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate


^ where λ
1) Estimation of the distribution F x; λ ^ is the vector of estimated parameters. The
two parameter gamma distribution was adopted with the probability density function (pdf)
defined by

1 x
f ðxÞ ¼ xα−1 e− β ; x > 0 ð1Þ
β α Γ ðαÞ

where Γ is the gamma function, and α and β are the shape and scale parameters. These
parameters were estimated by the maximum likelihood method:
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi !
1 4A
α¼ 1þ 1þ ð2aÞ
4A 3

X
β¼ ð2bÞ
α
where x represents the sample statistic, i.e., the rainfall average, and A is given as

 ∑ lnðxÞ
A ¼ ln X − ð3Þ
n
and n is the number of observations.


^
^; β
2) Calculation of the probability for each precipitation event p ¼ F x; α
3) Calculation of the standard normal quantile SPI = ϕ−1(p) where ϕ (x; 0, 1) is the standard
normal distribution.

Any SPI value can be back-transformed into precipitation by the inversion of the statistical
and computational methods. The SPI value is transformed into non-exceedance probability
through the normal distribution p = ϕ (SPI) and the probability is transformed into a precipi-


tation x by the inversion of the gamma distribution, x ¼ F −1 p; α ^ . This back-
^; β
transformation assumes a perfect fit between the adjusted pdf and the empirical distribution
of precipitation (Paulo et al. 2016).
The RDI is computed in three steps (Vangelis et al. 2011; Tigkas et al. 2015) like for the SPI
computation. First, the monthly time-series of the ratio αk between precipitation and PET
cumulated to the selected time scale k is computed as

∑kj¼1 Pij
αik ¼ ; i ¼ 1 to N ð4Þ
∑kj¼1 PETij

in which Pij and PETi j are the precipitation and PET relative to the month Bj^ of the
hydrological year Bi^, developing from September to August, and N is the length of the
time-series. Then RDI is normalized (RDIn) relative to the average ak as

ðiÞ
ak
RDI ðniÞ ¼ −1 ð5Þ
ak
 Merabti A. et al.

In this study, the Standardized RDI (RDIst) was computed by fitting the gamma pdf defined
in Eq. (1) to the frequency distribution of ak (Tigkas et al. 2015). However, other pdf may be
successfully used, e.g., the log-normal pdf (Mosaedi et al. 2015). The RDI time-series were
computed using the DrinC (Drought Indices Calculator) software (Tigkas et al. 2015), which
also includes a SPI computational tool, successfully used by Surendran et al. (2017) for India.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Application and Comparison of SPI and RDI at Local Scale

The application of both SPI and RDI is exemplified in Fig. 3 for five weather stations located
in different climate zones (Fig. 1): Zitouna (6° 27′ 31″ E, 36° 59′ 28″ N, 564 m altitude) in the
northern coastal humid climate zone; Ain Berda (7° 35′ 38″ E, 36° 41′ 28″ N, 114 m alt.) in the
northern moist sub-humid zone; Bordj Zemmorah (4° 50′ 02″ E, 36° 16′ 07″ N, 950 m alt.) in
the central and mountainous dry sub-humid climatic zone; Batna (6° 10′ 14″ E, 35° 33′ 51″ N,
1040 m alt.) in the central semi-arid mountainous zone; and Biskra (5° 43′ 04″ E, 34° 51′ 45″
N, 124 m alt.) in the southern arid plains. The applications refer to the period consisting of the
hydrological years from 1979/80 to 2013/14.
The time variation of RDI and SPI computed with the time scales of 3-, 6- and 12-month is
represented in Fig. 3. It shows that the behavior of both indices is very similar, with only slight
different for the five chosen locations, i.e., for the five considered climates. Drought and
wetness identified in one climatic zone are often not identified in another climatic region or are
identified with different severity. This is particularly evident for the 3- and 6-month time
scales. Differences are likely due to the influence of both very large mountains, the Tellian
Atlas and the Saharian Atlas (Fig. 1), which impact the atmospheric circulation at the scale of
NE Algeria. Moreover, differences also reflect the influence of local climate due to varied
altitude and exposure to the winds that drive moist air masses and latter impact precipitation,
temperature and PET.
Comparing results for the selected stations, it may be observed that SPI identifies more peak
values of both drought and wetness in the humid and moist sub-humid locations, Zitouna and
Ain Berda. This behavior is particularly evident for the 6- and 12-month time scales. That
behavior apparently changes for the dry sub-humid Bordj Zemmorah where RDI seems to
identify more severe wet events than SPI. Relative to semi-arid Batna, differences between
indices are quite small. However, for the 3-month time scale RDI identified the more extreme
dry and wetness events, which were also identified with SPI but with lower index values. For
the 6- and 12-month time scales differences between indices are very small. Regarding Biskra,
in the arid zone, differences between indices are larger, with RDI-6 and RDI-12 identifying
more severe peak values of drought events.
Summarizing, differences between indices are only slightly evident for the shorter time
scale and for dry sub-humid and semi-arid climates where PET plays a less important role
relative to precipitation; in the humid and moist sub-humid climates the importance of the
anomalies of precipitation are better noticed by SPI. Differently, in the arid zone RDI detects
larger drought peaks likely because PET plays a major role in areas where rainfall is low.
To better identify the differences between drought indices under different time scales, a
regression analysis was performed for the above identified five locations relating the SPI and
the RDI values for the three time scales (Fig. 4). Results show that the coefficient of
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

Fig. 3 Time variability of the SPI ( ) and RDI ( ) for the 3 time scales (3-, 6- and 12-month) at Zitouna,
humid climate, Ain Berda, moist sub-humid climate, Bordj Zemmorah, dry sub-humid climate, Batna, semi-arid
climate, and Biskra, arid climate, for 1979–80 to 2013–14

determination R2 is for all cases greater than 0.90, which indicates that the variances of RDI
and SPI are quite similar; however, R2 increases with the time scale, i.e., from the 3-month to
the 12-month, thus indicating that variances of RDI-12 and SPI-12 are more similar for the
larger time scales. Of interest to note that R2 for the arid location of Biskra equals 0.97 for all
time scales, which may be related to the fact that for an arid climate, PET, which is there
always much above precipitation, plays a more important role for all time scales.
The coefficient of regression b0 decreases when the time scale increases in case of the humid
Zitouna and the moist sub-humid Ain Berda, thus contrarily to the other stations, where b0
increases when the time scale increases (Fig. 4). This behavior indicates that when the time scale
increases differences between RDI and SPI are larger when the climate is more humid, with a
tendency for RDI to underestimate the wetter events. This behavior also indicates that RDI may
tend to very slightly overestimate dry events. When aridity increases, and for larger time scales,
b0 tends to be larger, so indicating that RDI tends to slightly overestimate wet events.

3.2 Identified Frequencies of Drought and Wetness Events for Diverse Climates

To better compare RDI and SPI, the frequency of cases when both indices identify drought and
wetness events were computed for all locations and all three time scales (Table 1). For humid and
 Merabti A. et al.

Fig. 4 Scatter plots of SPI vs. RDI for the 3 time scales (3-, 6- and 12-month) at Zitouna, humid climate, Ain
Berda, moist sub-humid climate, Bordj Zemmorah, dry sub-humid climate, Batna, semi-arid climate, and Biskra,
arid climate, for 1979–80 to 2013–14

moist sub-humid climates, with exception of the 3-month time scale, RDI identifies more wet than
dry events; similarly, SPI also identifies more wetness events, particularly those classified as
moderate or severe and extreme. Differences between indices are quite small. For the dry sub-
humid climate, results are similar to the previously analyzed more humid climates. However, there
are a larger percentage of severe and extreme drought events identified with SPI for all time scales.
Relative to the semi-arid zone, the SPI identifies more drought than wetness events, while
RDI tends to identify a larger percentage of wet events. Regarding the arid area, the SPI identifies
Table 1 Percentage of drought and wetness events identified with the RDI and SPI for 3 time scales (3-, 6- and 12-month) and the five climate zones, for the period 1979–80 to 2013–14

Climate Number of Drought Percentage of drought and wetness events

stations indices
Drought events Wetness events

Severe & Moderate Mild Total droughts Mild Moderate Severe & Total wet
extreme extreme events

Humid 18 RDI-3 6.8 9.4 33.8 50.1 33.8 9.4 6.8 49.9
RDI-6 7.8 8.1 33.1 49.0 35.2 9.3 6.6 51.0
RDI-12 8.1 8.6 31.1 47.9 36.3 10.0 5.8 52.1
SPI-3 6.7 9.8 32.6 49.1 34.3 9.8 6.9 50.9
SPI-6 8.0 8.4 31.1 47.5 35.3 9.9 7.4 52.5
SPI-12 8.2 8.2 29.4 45.8 36.3 10.0 7.9 54.2
Moist sub-humid 36 RDI-3 6.3 9.9 34.5 50.6 32.8 9.7 7.0 49.4
RDI-6 6.9 9.0 34.6 50.5 32.8 9.8 6.9 49.5
RDI-12 6.9 9.3 33.5 49.6 34.0 9.9 6.5 50.4
SPI-3 6.2 9.1 33.5 48.8 34.4 9.7 7.0 51.2
SPI-6 6.7 8.6 33.3 48.7 33.3 10.2 7.9 51.3
SPI-12 6.7 8.1 32.5 47.3 33.7 10.1 8.9 52.7
Dry sub- humid 19 RDI-3 6.5 10.2 33.3 50.0 33.4 9.8 6.7 50.0
RDI-6 7.2 9.1 33.0 49.2 34.4 9.8 6.5 50.8
RDI-12 7.5 9.3 31.2 47.9 36.5 9.7 5.9 52.1
SPI-3 7.0 9.0 33.7 49.6 34.6 9.7 6.2 50.4
SPI-6 7.3 8.9 33.2 49.4 34.2 10.2 6.2 50.6
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

SPI-12 7.7 9.0 31.6 48.3 35.5 9.2 7.1 51.7

Semi-arid 40 RDI-3 6.6 9.2 34.2 50.0 33.4 10.0 6.7 50.0
RDI-6 7.1 9.4 33.3 49.8 33.3 10.2 6.7 50.2
RDI-12 7.2 9.8 31.9 48.9 34.9 10.0 6.3 51.1
SPI-3 8.0 9.4 33.9 51.3 33.8 9.5 5.3 48.7
SPI-6 8.3 9.6 34.2 52.0 33.3 9.6 5.1 48.0
SPI-12 8.2 10.2 33.6 52.0 34.6 8.4 4.9 48.0
Arid 10 RDI-3 5.9 9.3 35.9 51.1 32.1 9.4 7.4 48.9
RDI-6 6.3 9.7 34.1 50.1 33.3 9.5 7.1 49.9
RDI-12 6.3 11.0 33.3 50.6 33.0 9.1 7.3 49.4
SPI-3 6.9 10.4 35.7 53.1 31.8 9.5 5.6 46.9
SPI-6 7.5 9.9 36.0 53.3 32.6 8.4 5.7 46.7
SPI-12 7.9 11.7 33.5 53.1 33.3 9.0 4.5 46.9
 Merabti A. et al.

a much larger number of drought events than RDI, with both indices identifying more drought
than wet events. The results analyzed above are slightly contradictory with those relative to
individual locations but essentially they allow to perceive the high coherence of results of both
RDI and SPI, and that both indices are well usable with the advantage of considering PET in case
of RDI. However, RDI shows smaller differences among climate zones and time-scales, which is
an advantage relative to SPI, and was also observed by Banimahd and Khalili (2013).
Results from Table 1 showed similar results between SPI and RDI for all time-scales, with
both indices being able to identify nearly the same events with approximated severity.
Nevertheless, the frequency of severe and extreme drought events is higher with SPI for dry
sub-humid, semi-arid and arid climates and is larger with RDI for the humid and moist sub-
humid climates (Table 1). These results do not contradict previous referred studies (Khalili
et al. 2011; Shokoohi and Morovati 2015; Zarch et al. 2015), even considering that differences
in data sources and time and spatial scales of these studies is notable, e.g., Zarch et al. (2015)
used very long gridded datasets and data from climate model predictions at the worldwide
scale, while Shokoohi and Morovati (2015) used reanalysis temperature and observed gridded
precipitation for a lake basin in Iran. More importantly, results in Table 1 largely agree with
those reported in the companion paper (Merabti et al. 2017) relative to rotated principal
components where the first one refers to the more humid zone of the region and the second
to the southern more arid areas. Results of both approaches show that RDI, differently of SPI,
responds quite uniformly in different climates likely due to the inclusion of PET, which
incorporates global warming effects into the RDI.

4 Conclusions

Two drought indices, the SPI and RDI, with the time-scales of 3-, 6- and 12-month, were
compared at local scale, in northeastern Algeria. Both indices have shown quite similar and
coherent results through their application to five locations located in the various climate zones
having humid, moist sub-humid, dry sub-humid, semi-arid and arid climates. Only slight
differences between indices were identified, with regression coefficients generally larger, and
closer to 1.0 for the 3-month time-scale. For the arid and semi-arid zones, SPI identifies a
larger number of drought events while for more humid climates, both SPI and RDI identify
more wetness events. This behavior may indicate that for sub-humid climates drought and
wetness events essentially relate with rainfall, thus making PET to play a minor role in
differentiating RDI from SPI.
Differences among locations relative to the time variation of both RDI and SPI computed
with all time-scales show to depend upon the aridity or wetness of the climate. These
conditions are influenced by the local climate, which varies enormously in NE Algeria due
to distance to the Mediterranean Sea, and the great mountains of the Tellian Atlas and the
Saharan Atlas that impact precipitation and climate in relation to sites elevation and exposure
to the air masses flowing above the region.
Small but notable differences between RDI and SPI were identified through computing the
frequency of various drought and wetness classes. For the humid and sub-humid locations, both
RDI and SPI generally identified more wetness events, with SPI finding more events than RDI
classified as moderate or severe/extreme wetness. Relative to the semi-arid and arid zones, the SPI
identified more drought than wetness events, while RDI identifies about the same frequency for
both type of events, although RDI identified slightly more drought events in the arid zone. The
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

results analyzed above allow to perceive the high coherence of results of both RDI and SPI and the
possible advantage of using PET, as for RDI, mainly in dry sub-humid and semiarid areas. These
conclusions are compatible with those of the quoted literature but are necessarily different
considering the nature of data used in other studies, as well as their spatial and time extents.
It may be concluded that more studies are required to better assess the differences of the
drought indices for various climates. An in-depth comparison of drought and wetness behavior
in the northwestern and the northeastern Algeria is also necessary, likely using other indices
that include PET and considering influences of indices of atmospheric circulation such as NAO
and MO, which could be not only useful for water resources management but also for
improving the knowledge about drought indices and their use in prediction.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the National Agency of Water Resources for providing the data
of rainfall stations. Authors acknowledge FCT for the PhD research grant SFRH/BD/92880/2013 attributed to the
third author, and thank Dr. Ana Paulo and Dr. Paula Paredes for their comments and support. Authors also
acknowledge funding of LEAF Research Unit by FCT through the contract UID/AGR/04129/2013.

References

Akhtari R, Morid S, Mahdian MH, Smakhtin V (2009) Assessment of areal interpolation methods for spatial
analysis of SPI and EDI drought indices. Int J Climatol 29:135–145
Allen RG, Pereira LS, Raes D, Smith M (1998). Crop evapotranspiration. Guidelines for Computing Crop Water
Requirements. FAO Irrig. Drain. Pap. 56, FAO, Rome, 300 p
Banimahd SA, Khalili D (2013) Factors influencing Markov chains predictability characteristics utilizing SPI,
RDI, EDI and SPEI drought indices in different climatic zones. Water Resour Manag 27:3911–3928
Bordi I, Fraedrich K, Gerstengarbe FW, Werner PC, Sutera A (2004) Potential predictability of dry and wet
periods: Sicily and Elbe-Basin (Germany). Theor Appl Climatol 77:125–138
Bordi I, Fraedrich K, Sutera A (2009) Observed drought and wetness trends in Europe: an update. Hydrol Earth
Syst Sci 13:1519–1530
Dile YT, Srinivasan R (2014) Evaluation of CFSR climate data for hydrologic prediction in data-scarce
watersheds: an application in the Blue Nile River Basin. J Am Water Resour Assoc 50:1226–1241
Fuka DR, Walter MT, MacAlister C, Degaetano AT, Steenhuis TS, Easton ZM (2014) Using the climate forecast
system reanalysis as weather input data for watershed. Hydrol Process 28:5613–5623
Giorgi F, Lionello P (2008) Climate change projections for the Mediterranean region. Glob Planet Chang 63:90–104
Guttman NB (1999) Accepting the standardized precipitation index: a calculation algorithm. J Am Water Resour
Assoc 35(2):311–322
Hamlaoui-Moulai L, Mesbah M, Souag-Gamane D, Medjerab A (2013) Detecting hydro-climatic change using
spatiotemporal analysis of rainfall time series in Western Algeria. Nat Hazards 65:1293–1311
Hoerling M, Eischeid J, Perlwitz J, Quan X, Zhang T, Pegion P (2012) On the increased frequency of
Mediterranean drought. J Clim 25:2146–2161
Karl TR, Williams CN Jr (1987) An approach to adjusting climatological time series for discontinuous
inhomogeneities. J Climate Appl Meteor 26:1744–1763
Keyantash J, Dracup JA (2002) The quantification of drought: an evaluation of drought indices. Bul. Am
Meteorol Soc 83:1167–1180
Khalili D,·Farnoud T, Jamshidi H,·Kamgar-Haghighi AA,·Zand-Parsa S (2011) Comparability analyses of the
SPI and RDI meteorological drought indices in different climatic zones. Water Resour Manag 25:1737–1757
Kottek M, Grieser J, Beck C, Rudolf B, Rubel F (2006) World map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification
updated. Meteorol Z 15:259–263
Laborde JP, Mouhous N (2006). Hydrolab - Ajustements, Régressions, ACP, Variographie, … Université de
Nice, Sophia Antipolis. (https://hydrologie.org/MOD/Hydrolab/hydrolab.htm)
McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In:
8th Conf. Applied Climatology, Am Meteorol Soc, Boston, pp. 179–184
Meddi M, Assani A, Meddi H (2010) Temporal variability of annual rainfall in the Macta and Tafna catchments,
northwestern Algeria. Water Resour Manag 24:3817–3833
 Merabti A. et al.

Meddi M, Meddi H, Toumi S, Mehaiguen M (2013) Regionalization of rainfall in north-western Algeria.

Geographia Technica 1:56–69
Merabti A, Martins DS, Meddi M, Pereira LS (2017) Spatial and time variability of drought based on SPI and
RDI with various time scales. Water Resour Manage (this issue). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1856-6
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391:202–216
Mohammed R, Scholz M (2017) Impact of evapotranspiration formulations at various elevations on the
reconnaissance drought index. Water Resour Manag 31:531–548
Moreira EE, Coelho CA, Paulo AA, Pereira LS, Mexia JT (2008) SPI-based drought category prediction using
loglinear models. J Hydrol 354:116–130
Moreira EE, Pires CL, Pereira LS (2016) SPI drought class predictions driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation
index using log-linear modeling. Water 8:43. https://doi.org/10.3390/w8020043
Mosaedi A, Abyaneh HZ, Sough MG, Samadi SZ (2015) Quantifying changes in reconnaissance drought index
using equiprobability transformation function. Water Resour Manag 29:2451–2469
Nicault A, Alleaume S, Brewer S, Carrer M, Nola P, Guiot J (2008) Mediterranean drought fluctuation during the
last 500 years based on tree-ring data. Clim Dyn 31:227–245
Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought, research paper 45, U.S. Department of Commerce Weather Bureau,
Washington, D.C.
Paulo AA, Pereira LS (2007) Prediction of SPI drought class transitions using Markov chains. Water Resour
Manag 21:1813–1827
Paulo AA, Martins D, Pereira LS (2016) Influence of precipitation changes on the SPI and related drought
severity. An analysis using long-term data series. Water Resour Manag 30:5737–5757
Paulo AA, Pereira LS (2006) Drought concepts and characterization: comparing drought indices applied at local
and regional scales. Water Int 31:37–49
Pereira LS, Cordery I, Iacovides I (2009) Coping with water scarcity. Addressing the challenges. Springer,
Dordrecht, p 382
Saadi S, Todorovic M, Tanasijevic L, Pereira LS, Pizzigalli C, Lionello P (2015) Climate change and
Mediterranean agriculture: impacts on winter wheat and tomato crop evapotranspiration, irrigation require-
ments and yield. Agric Water Manag 147:103–115
Saha S, Moorthi S, Pan HL, Wu X, Wang J, Nadiga S, Tripp P, Kistler R, Woollen J, Behringer D, Liu H (2010)
The NCEP climate forecast system reanalysis. B Am Meteorol Soc 91:1015–1057
Shokoohi A, Morovati R (2015) Basinwide comparison of RDI and SPI within an IWRM framework. Water
Resour Manag 29:2011–2026
Sousa PM, Trigo RM, Aizpurua P, Nieto R, Gimeno L, Garcia-Herrera R (2011) Trends and extremes of drought
indices throughout the 20th century in the Mediterranean. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 11:33–51
Spinoni J, Naumann G, Carrao H, Barbosa P, Vogt J (2014) World drought frequency, duration, and severity for
1951–2010. Int J Climatol 34:2792–2804
Surendran U, Kumar V, Ramasubramoniam S, Raja P (2017) Development of drought indices for semi-arid
region using drought indices calculator (DrinC) – a case study from Madurai District, a semi-arid region in
India. Water Resour Manag. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1687-5
Taibi S, Meddi M, Mahé G, Assani A (2017) Relationships between atmospheric circulation indices and rainfall
in Northern Algeria and comparison of observed and RCM-generated rainfall. Theor Appl Climatol 127:
241–257
Tanasijevic L, Todorovic M, Pizzigalli C, Lionello P, Pereira LS (2014) Impacts of climate change on olive crop
evapotranspiration and irrigation requirements in the Mediterranean region. Agric Water Manag 144:54–68
Thornthwaite CW (1948) An approach toward a rational classification of climate. Geogr Rev 38(55):94
Tigkas D, Vangelis H, Tsakiris G (2012) Drought and climatic change impact on streamflow in small watersheds.
Sci Total Environ 440:33–41
Tigkas D, Vangelis H, Tsakiris G (2015) DrinC: a software for drought analysis based on drought indices. Earth
Sci Inf 8:697–709
Touchan R, Anchukaitis KJ, Meko DM, Attalah S, Baisan C, Aloui A (2008) Long term context for recent
drought in northwestern Africa. Geophys Res Lett 35:L13705. https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL034264
Touchan R, Anchukaitis KJ, Meko DM, Sabir M, Attalah S, Aloui A (2011) Spatiotemporal drought variability
in northwestern Africa over the last nine centuries. Clim Dyn 37:237–252
Tramblay Y, El Adlouni S, Servat E (2013) Trends and variability in extreme precipitation indices over Maghreb
countries. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 13:3235–3248
Tsakiris G (2017) Drought risk assessment and management. Water Resour Manag 31:3083–3095
Tsakiris G, Kordalis N, Tigkas D, Tsakiris V, Vangelis H (2016) Analysing drought severity and areal extent by
2D Archimedean Copulas. Water Resour Manag 30:5723–5735
Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional drought assessment based on the reconnaissance drought
index (RDI). Water Resour Manag 21:821–833
UNEP. 1997. World atlas of desertification. 2nd ed. United Nations Environment Programme, Arnold, London, 182 p
Comparing SPI and RDI Applied at Local Scale as Influenced by Climate

Vangelis H,·Spiliotis M,·Tsakiris G (2011) Drought severity assessment based on bivariate probability analysis.
Water Resour Manag 25:357–371
Vangelis H, Tigkas D, Tsakiris G (2013) The effect of PET method on reconnaissance drought index (RDI)
calculation. J Arid Environ 88:130–140
Vicente-Serrano SM, Begueria S, Lopez-Moreno JI (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global
warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23:1696–1718
Weiß M, Flörke M, Menzel L, Alcamo J (2007) Model-based scenarios of Mediterranean droughts. Adv Geosci
12:145–151
Worqlul AW, Yen H, Collick AS, Tilahun SA, Langan S, Steenhuis TS (2017) Evaluation of CFSR, TMPA 3B42
and ground-based rainfall data as input for hydrological models, in data scarce regions: the upper Blue Nile
Basin, Ethiopia. Catena 152:242–251
Zarch MAA, Malekinezhad H, Mobin MH, Dastorani MT, Kousari MR (2011) Drought monitoring by
reconnaissance drought index (RDI) in Iran. Water Resour Manag 25:3485–3504
Zarch MAA, Sivakumar B, Sharma A (2015) Droughts in a warming climate: a global assessment of standard-
ized precipitation index (SPI) and reconnaissance drought index (RDI). J Hydrol 526:183–195
Zarei AR, Moghimi MM, Mahmoudi MR (2016) Analysis of changes in spatial pattern of drought using RDI
index in south of Iran. Water Resour Manag 30:3723–3743
Zargar A, Sadiq R, Naser B, Khan FI (2011) A review of drought indices. Environ Rev 19:333–349
Zeroual A, Assani AA, Meddi M (2017) Combined analysis of temperature and rainfall variability as they relate
to climate indices in Northern Algeria over the 1972–2013 period. Hydrol Res 48:584–595
Zeroual A, Meddi M, Bensaad S (2013) The impact of climate change on river flow in arid and semi-arid rivers in
Algeria. In: Climate and land-surface changes in hydrology, proceedings of H01, IAHS-IAPSO-IASPEI
Assembly, vol 359. IAHS Publ, Gothenburg, pp 105–110

View publication stats