Identification of dynamic drought propagation from a nonstationary perspective and its application to drought warnings

Accurate drought warnings in changing environments remain challenging since the nonstationary behaviors of drought propagation. The novelty of this study is the presentation of a nonstationary framework for drought propagation analysis and the objective determination of drought propagation thresholds. The calculated propagation probabilities and thresholds are responsive to changing environments. The Generalized Addictive Models in Location, Scale and Shape (GAMLSS) and time-varying Clayton copula function were adopted to establish the nonstationary joint distribution between meteorological and hydrological drought indices. Several indices reflecting the climatic and anthropic impacts on hydrological process were selected as covariates. Combined with the conditional probability distribution function, the time-varying drought propagation probabilities can be estimated to describe the watershed drought tolerance variations. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were utilized to determine the propagation thresholds for drought warnings. The upper Yellow River Basin (UYRB) was selected as the study area. Results indicate that the nonstationary models show better fitting performance for two drought indices series. The Clayton copula function with dynamic parameters offers a more accurate description of the linkages between two types of drought. The analysis of watershed drought tolerance reveals a declining trend from June to October, contrasting with an increasing trend during other months. In comparison to the stationary approach, the hit rates of the proposed method improve by 0.18, reaching 0.88, while the false alarm rates decrease by 0.11, reaching 0.24. The criteria for propagation threshold determination in the UYRB is established as a conditional probability of 20%. These findings can provide a foundation for drought warning management in a changing environment.