Regional frequency analysis of droughts: portuguese case

Abstract

Poster apresentado WCRP (World Climate Research programme)- Workshop on Drought Predictability and Prediction in a Changing Climate: Assessing Current Knowledge and Capabilities, User Requirements and Research Priorities, 2-4 Março 2011, Barcelona (Spain).[Poster introduction] A common problem in drought risk analysis relates to the assessment of the rarity of the events, such as long duration droughts or high magnitude droughts. Being a frequent phenomena in the Southern Europe and in others regions of the world drought constitute a primary natural hazard for human activities. For this reason, and for an improved drought risk management, the preparation of drought hazard maps is an important and urgent task. The drought definition based on deviations from normal conditions or from reference stages implies that droughts can occur in any hydroclimatological region and at any time of the year with the same probability. In order to due so, a large number of quantitative drought characteristics must been considered. Two common approaches to select extreme events from a drought index time series were analyzed: the annual maximum series (AMS) and the partial duration series (PDS) approaches