Climate change: assessment and monitoring of meteorological and hydrological drought of Wadi El Hammam Basin (NW- Algeria)

Abstract

During the last century, Algeria experienced a rainfall deficit was recorded in 1944, then successive drought periods since 1975 to the present day in Northen and Eastern. The most recent has repercussions on water resources and on agriculture. In this paper, we focus on the meteorological and hydrological drought. For describing and monitoring drought severity periods, we used meteorological and hydrological drought indices: Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), effective Drought Index (EDI) and the standardized Runoff Index (SRI). Data was recording for the period of 30 years at Wadi Louza catchment (NW- Algeria). The best correlation between meteorological drought indices was found for 9-month time step. The results show that severe meteorological identified in March-1983 till the end of August-1984 in Sid Ahmed region and extreme hydrological drought during 1993.

Keywords: Rainfall deficit; EDI; SPI; SRI; Wadi El Hammam