A comparative assessment of meteorological drought in the Tafna basin, Northwestern Algeria

: The drought ranked first in terms the natural hazard characteristics and impacts followed by tropical cyclones, regional floods, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Drought monitoring is an important aspect of drought risk management and the assessment of drought is usually done through using various drought indices. The western region in Algeria is the most affected by the drought since the middle of the 70s.The current research focuses on the analysis and comparison of four meteorological drought indices (standardized precipitation index – SPI , percent of normal index – PN , decile index – DI , and rainfall anomaly index – RAI ) in the Tafna basin for different time scales (annual, seasonal, and monthly) during 1979–2011. The results showed that the SPI and DI have similar frequencies for dry and wet categories. The RAI and PN were able to detect more drought categories. Meanwhile, all indices have strong positive correlations between each other, especially with Spearman correlation tests (0.99; 1.0), the meteorological drought indices almost showed consistent and similar results in the study area. It was determined in 1982 as the driest year and 2008 as the wettest year in the period of the study. The analysis of the trend was based on the test of Mann– Kendall (MK), a positive trend of the indices were detected on a monthly scale, this increasing of indices trend represent the increasing of the wet categories which explains the increasing trend of the rainfall in the last 2000s. These results overview of the understanding of drought trends in the region is crucial for making strategies and assist in decision making for water resources management and reducing vulnerability to drought.