Resumen

CAMPOS-ARANDA, Daniel Francisco. Comparison of the Standardized Palmer Drought Index (SPDI) in three climatic locations in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Tecnol. cienc. agua [online]. 2018, vol.9, n.5, pp.246-279.  Epub 24-Nov-2020. ISSN 2007-2422.  https://doi.org/10.24850/j-tyca-2018-05-10.

Meteorological Droughts are extreme natural phenomena with decreased precipitation, and thus constitute a threat to ecosystems and human societies. Drought Indices are detection and monitoring tools. These indices make use of climatic variables in order to obtain a characteristic numerical value that is more useful than the original raw data. The SPDI (Standardized Palmer Drought Index) is a recently proposed multivariate-type index, which uses a soil water balance with potential evapotranspiration estimated using the Thornthwaite method and a probabilistic approach to process moisture deviations for different durations of drought. The SPDI was applied to monthly precipitation and average temperature data from three climatological stations with large registries (≥ 50 years) from the state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, located in each of its three geographical areas: Altiplano Potosino, Middle Zone and Huasteca Region. These stations are: Villa de Arriaga, Río Verde and Xilitla. A contrast between the SPDI results and those calculated with the two preceding indices (SPI and SPEI) was carried out for each of these climatological stations. The former uses only monthly precipitation data and the latter incorporates potential evapotranspiration. The aforementioned comparison covers drought durations of 6, 12 and 24 months. Results indicate that the percentages of each type of drought indicated by the three indices have similar values in terms of the order of magnitude; however, they differ in a specific way for each drought duration, mainly in relation to severe and extreme droughts. The evolution graphs of the SPDI make it possible to clearly highlight periods of drought, defining their start and end dates as well as maximum events including both severity and the date of occurrence.

Palabras llave : Meteorological droughts; soil water balance; potential evapotranspiration; statistical tests; moving sums; Log-Logistic distribution; SPI and SPEI indices; types of droughts.

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