A study on drought analysis using time series, SPI and SPEI drought indices in Bursa region

All agricultural activities are directly related to the climate. In recent years, temperature increases and changes in precipitation regimes adversely affect the Mediterranean Basin, which includes our country. While increasing temperatures and irregular precipitation increase the need for irrigation in crop production in some regions, excessive and irregular precipitation in some regions seriously damages production. Nowadays, climate change has been accepted by many climate scientists as a problem that cannot be ignored. In our country, drought is one of the natural disasters that will affect agricultural production the most. In this study, a drought analysis was made for Bursa, which is one of the important cities of our country in agricultural production. In addition, non-parametric Mann-Kendall and Sen's Trend Analyzes were conducted between 1990 - 2019 for precipitation and temperature values. According to results of the trend analysis, statistically significant trends could not be reached in the precipitation data, increasing trends were observed in the temperature data. SPI and SPEI methods were used for drought analysis, although extreme values were reached for the years 1960 – 2019 as a result of both methods, it was determined that normal drought levels were dominant in general.