Panama has a warm, wet, tropical climate. Unlike countries that are farther from the equator, Panama does not experience seasons marked by changes in temperature. Instead, Panama's seasons are divided into Wet and Dry. The Dry Season generally begins around mid-December, but this may vary by as much 3 to 4 weeks. Around this time, strong northeasterly winds known as "trade winds" begin to blow and little or no rain may fall for many weeks in a row. Daytime air temperatures increase slightly to around 30-31 Celsius (86-88 Fahrenheit), but nighttime temperatures remain around 22-23 Celsius (72-73 Fahrenheit). Relative humidity drops throughout the season, reaching average values as low as 70 percent. The Wet Season usually begins around May 1, but again this may vary by 1 or 2 weeks. May is often one of the wettest months, especially in the Panama Canal area, so the transition from the very dry conditions at the end of the Dry Season to the beginning of Wet Season can be very dramatic. With the arrival of the rain, temperatures cool down a little during the day and the trade winds disappear. Relative humidity rises quickly and may hover around 90 to 100% throughout the Wet Season. Drought forecasts can be an effective tool for mitigating some of the more adverse consequences of drought. The presented thesis compares forecast of drought indices based on seven different models of artificial neural networks model. The analyzed drought indices are SPI and SPEI-ANN Drought forecast, and was derived for the period of 1985-2014 on Panama Canal basin; I've selected seven of sixty-one Hydro-meteorological networks, existing in the Panama Canal basin. The rainfall is 1784 mm per year. The meteorological data were obtained from the PANAMA CANAL AUTHORITY, Section of Water Resources, and Panama Canal Authority, Panama. The performance of all the models was compared using ME, MAE, RMSE, NS, and PI. The results of drought indices forecast, explained by the values of seven model performance indices, show, that in Panama Canal has problem with the drought. Even though The Panama is generally seen as a wet country, droughts can cause severe problems. Significant drought conditions are observed in the index based on precipitation and potential evaporation found in this thesis; The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), were used to quantify drought in the Panama Canal basin, Panama Canal, at multiple time scales within the period 1985-2014. The results indicate that drought indices based on different variables show the same major drought events. Drought indices based on precipitation and potential evaporation are more variable in time while drought indices based on discharge. Spatial distribution of meteorological drought is uniform over Panama Canal.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:258961 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Gutiérrez Hernández, Julián Eli |
| Contributors | Máca, Petr |
| Publisher | Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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