Drought is a natural phenomenon that can occur in all climatic zones, and is persistent and regionally widespread. Extreme drought caused by climate change can have serious consequences for freshwater ecosystems, which can have significant social and economic impacts. In this study, the effect of meteorological drought on river water temperature was analyzed probabilistically in order to identify the risk of river water temperature stress experienced by the aquatic ecosystem when a meteorological drought occurs. Meteorological drought is divided into a situation in which moisture is insufficiently supplied from the atmosphere and a situation in which the atmosphere requires excessive moisture from the earth's surface. Using the copula theory, a joint probabilistic model between the river water temperature and each meteorological drought caused by two causes is proposed. In order to consider the propagation time from meteorological drought to river water temperature, the optimal time-scale meteorological drought index is adopted through correlation analysis between the meteorological drought index calculated at various time-scales and the river water temperature. The optimal copula function of the drought index and river water temperature is determined using AIC analysis. Using the proposed model, a risk map is drawn for the river water temperature stress experienced by the aquatic ecosystem under the user-defined meteorological drought severity. The risk map identifies the stream sections where the river water temperature is relatively more sensitive to meteorological drought. The identified stream sections appear differently depending on the cause of the meteorological drought, the region, and the season.
Keywords: Copula; Environmental drought; Evapotranspiration; Meteorological drought; Precipitation; River water temperature.
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