An analysis of drought in western Iran from 1966 to 2000 is presented using monthly precipitation data observed at 140 gauges uniformly distributed over the area. Drought conditions have been assessed by means of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). To study the long-term drought...

In the present paper, regional drought modes in Iran are identified applying the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Varimax rotation to the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) computed on different time scales. Data used include gridded monthly precipitation covering the period...

The lack of reliable and updated precipitation datasets is the most important limitation that hinders establishing a drought monitoring and early warning system in Iran. To overcome this obstacle, we have evaluated the applicability of GPCC and NCEP/NCAR precipitation datasets for drought...

Half-hourly ground-based GPS measurements of precipitable water vapor (PWV) from January 2009 to December 2012 are analyzed to investigate their potential for hydrological applications at basin level. In particular, the usefulness of these high temporal resolution data for monitoring extreme...

Regional drought modes in Portugal are identified applying the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Varimax rotation to the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) computed on various time scales using the three precipitation datasets covering the period 1950–2003: (i) The observation dataset...

The impacts of different spatial resolutions and different data assimilation schemes of the available re-analysis data sets (NCEP/NCAR and ERA-40) on the assessment of drought variability are analysed. Particular attention has been devoted to the analysis of the possible existence of a linear...

Monthly data records of 40 Iranian stations distributed over the country, for the period 1971–2005, were utilized for estimation of reference evapotranspiration (ETo) using Penman–Monteith (PM-ETo), Hargreaves–Samani (HS) and FAO-PM temperature (PMT) methods. To estimate ETo with HS and...

In the present paper the authors analyse the drought occurrence over the European region by using the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis precipitation rates covering the period from 1948 to 2000. The drought assessment is based on the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which has been proposed as an...

Monthly averages of maximum and minimum temperature, mean relative humidity, sunshine duration and wind speed at 2m height, relative to 148 Iranian weather stations and period 1991–2005 were utilized for interpolation and gridding the variables to 1̊ in latitude and longitude. The Ordinary...