Assessment of drought conditions over Vietnam using standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index, MERRA-2 re-analysis, and dynamic land cover
OPEN ACCESS
Loading...
Author / Producer
Date
2020-12
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
Altmetric
OPEN ACCESS
Data
Abstract
Study region
Vietnam.
Study focus
In recent years Vietnam has experienced historical drought events possibly affected by climate change, but the analysis is challenging due to lack of necessary observations for monitoring drought conditions. The goal of this study is to analyze the characteristics of droughts over a 30-year period, using three spatial-resolution MERRA-2 datasets in Vietnam. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) was used as an index for drought based on precipitation and temperature. We also estimated the impacts of drought on agriculture using annual land cover datasets.
New hydrological insights for the regions
Our results identified significant increasing trends in precipitation in Northern Vietnam and decreasing trends in Southern Vietnam. The increasing trends in temperature occurred mainly in Southern Vietnam. These trends in rainfall and temperature resulted in an increasing trend in drought frequency and severity in Southern Vietnam, especially in the South-Central Region and the Mekong Delta. The comparison between the observed drought records and modeled drought index demonstrated that the simulated drought conditions are better at higher spatial resolution. The area under drought in agricultural lands calculated using dynamic land-cover data sets resulted in a better agreement with observed records. Our findings reveal the feasibility of using a model-based drought index in data-sparse areas for long-term trend drought analysis, and for practical applications of advanced re-analysis products in water resource management.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
32
Pages / Article No.
100767
Publisher
Elsevier
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Hydrology; Drought; MERRA-2; Trend analysis; Land cover