Arab J Geosci (2009) 2:1927 DOI 10.

1007/s12517-008-0015-z

ORIGINAL PAPER

Multivariate geostatistical methods of mean annual and seasonal rainfall in southwest Saudi Arabia
Ali M. Subyani & Abdulrahman M. Al-Dakheel

Received: 21 July 2008 / Accepted: 30 September 2008 / Published online: 20 December 2008 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2008

Abstract A multivariate geostatistics (cokriging) is used for regional analysis and prediction of rainfall throughout the southwest region of Saudi Arabia. Elevation is intruded as a covariant factor in order to bring topographic influences into the methodology. Sixty-three representative weather stations are selected for a 21-year period covering different microclimate conditions. Results show that on an annual basis, there is no significant change using elevation. On the seasonal basis, the cokriging method gave more information about rainfall occurrence values, its accuracy related to the degree of correlation between elevation and rainfall by season. The prediction of spring and winter rainfall was improved owing to the importance of orographic processes, while the summer season was not affected within its monsoon climatology. In addition, fall season shows inverse and weak correlation of elevation with rainfall. Cross-validation and cokriging variances are also used for more accuracy of rainfall regional estimation. Moreover, even though the correlation is not significant, the isohyet values of cokriged estimates provided more information on rainfall changes with elevation. Finally, adding more secondary variables in addition to elevation could improve the accuracy of cokriging estimates.

Keywords Multivariate geostatistics . Cokriging . Rainfall . Elevation . Saudi Arabia Introduction It has been stated in many studies that the high elevation receives more rainfall than low elevation on the basis of annual data (Chua and Bras 1982; Dingman et al. 1988; Hevesi et al. 1992; Johnson and Hanson 1995). However, the network of the rainfall measuring stations in the southwest is sparse and available data are insufficient to characterize the highly variable spatial distribution of rainfall (Alehaideb 1985; Subyani 2004). The general characteristics of rainfall and kriging estimates on the basis of annual data shows that the maximum amount of rainfall does not always occur at high elevations; in addition, it shows a little increase in its variance due to the complexity of terrain. Other factors such as the distance from the source of moisture and seasonality are also important. One of the advantages of geostatistics is to use additional information to improve rainfall estimations. During recent years, cokriging has been used to bring topographic influences into the calculations (Aboufirassi and Mario 1984; Phillips et al. 1992; Hevesi et al. 1992) The second step constructs contour maps for the primary variable of this section. The cokriging system will be developed with the basic two conditions of unbiasedness and minimum error variance (Myers 1982; Ahmed and Marsily 1987). Cokriging is a multivariate geostatistical method that is used to estimate the spatial correlation of two variables that are interdependent in a physical sense. It represents more accurately the expected local orographic influence on rainfall. It is also used to reduce estimation variances when one of these variables is undersampled.

A. M. Subyani (*) Hydrogeology Department, King Abdulaziz University, P. O. Box 80206, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia e-mail: asubyani@hotmail.com A. M. Al-Dakheel Geology Department, King Saud University, P. O. Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia e-mail: amadakheel@yahoo.com

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The southwest region lies within the subtropical climate zone of Saudi Arabia and receives the highest amount of rainfall in comparison to other regions, because it is mountainous with elevations reaching to over 2,000 m above mean sea level. It is selected as the study area, which lies between latitudes 17:00 N and 22:00 N and longitudes 40:00 E and 43:00 E (Fig. 1). The main purpose of this paper is to describe the characterization and modeling for the distribution of annual and seasonal rainfall by using elevation as a covariate to bring topographic influence into the calculations using multivariate geostatistics (cokriging) technique. This technique can be used to improve estimation accuracy by reducing estimation variances.

and cross-variogram. These models are used to describe and interpret the cross continuity and dependency between two or more variables. As an example, let Zi x and Zj x be two random variables. Hence, under the second-order stationarity, the cross-variogram as: g ij h 1 : 2 E Zi x h Zi x Zj x h Zj x 1 Of course, the direct and cross-variogram models should satisfy the nonnegative-definite conditions (Christakos 1992). The linear model of coregionalization, in terms of variogram, is defined as a linear combination as shown in Eq. 1. However, cross-variogram model parameters were selected with additional criteria of satisfying the Cauchy Schwarz inequality as follows (Myers 1982) as: 1= g ij h  g ii hg jj h 2 : 2

Theory of cokriging The first step in multivariate geostatistics is to establish a suitable model for cross continuity and dependency between two or more variables. This positive correlation between variables is called cross-regionalization or coregionalization and it can be estimated by cross-covariance

where ij (h) is the cross-variogram model, and ii (h) and jj (h) are the direct-variogram models for primary and secondary variables, respectively.

Fig. 1 Sample location and topographic features of study area

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Consequently, Hevesi et al. (1992) proposed a graphical test of the positive-definite condition (PDC) with the CauchySchwarz inequality as: 1= PDC g ii hg jj h 2 : 3

case of the kriging system, the cokriging estimator should satisfy the two conditions of unbiasedness and the estimation variance minimization. Unbiasedness Condition ^ x0 can be From Eqs. 4 and 5, the unbiased condition for Z written as: n  h i m P P b E Z x0 E li Z x i w k Y xk
n P i 1 i1

The model is considered to be positive definite if the absolute value of the cross-variogram for any distance is smaller than the corresponding absolute PDC value and the slope of cross-variogram model did not exceed the slope of the PDC curve. Cokriging The cokriging technique is a modification of the kriging technique. It is used to merge two or more random variables. Estimation of cokriging contains a primary variable of interest, which is undersampled, and one or more secondary variables that are better sampled. When the variable of interest is costly or undersampled, it is useful to apply cokriging by using secondary variable(s), which is easily sampled at cheap cost. These secondary variables are usually cross-correlated with the primary variable. Cokriging is a useful technique used to improve the interpolation of one important variable by using another variable; in addition, the cross-variogram models may get smoother than variogram models and improve the predictions (Journel and Huijbregts 1978). Consider the coregionalization of the two stationary random functions Z(x) and Y(x) that are correlated, and we are interested in estimating at a location x0 the value of unknown Z(x0). From the cross-correlation structure, the estimation of Z(x0) is not only based on the primary variable Z:Z(xi),,Z(xn) but also based on the secondary variable Y:Y(xk),,Y(xm). In general, m n, so we can write the following equations: E Z xi mz E Y xk my 4

li E Z x i
n P i1

k 1 m P

mz

li m y

k 1 m P

wk E Y xk

k 1

wk mz :

To guarantee the unbiased condition, the following constraints on the cokriging weights can be established as:
n P i 1

li 1 and

m P k 1

w k 0:

Variance of Estimation Minimizing the variance of the estimation error can be written as: h i2 b x0 Z x0 Minimum: s2 E Z 8

That is, the variance minimization of the estimation error, 2, is subject to the two conditions in Eqs. 5 and 6 and therefore can be achieved by the method of Lagrange multipliers (1 and 2). This leads to the following cokriging system in the form of variogram and crossvariogram as:
n P j 1 n P i 1 m P l j g z xi x j wk g zy xi xk m1 g z xi x0

li g zy xi xk

k 1 m P

where mz and my are the constant means of Z(xi) and Y(xk), respectively. That is Z(xi) and Y(xk) are (jointly) secondorder stationary. The best linear unbiased estimate of Z value at any location x0 can be written as: b x0 Z
n X i1

l 1

wl g y xl xk m2 g zy xk x0 i 1; . . . ; n k 1; . . . ; m

9 where:

li Z x i

m X k 1

w k Y xk

where Z(xi) are the measured values of the primary variable Z at Z(xi), i =1,, n, and Y(xk) are the measured values of the secondary variable Y at Y(xk), k =1,, m. i and k are the cokriging weights that should be determined. As in the

z (xi xj) = variogram model between sample points of the primary ReV z(x) separated by a distance xi xj z (xj x0) = variogram model between sample points of the primary ReV z(x) and unknown point x0 separated by a distance xj x0 y (xl xk) = variogram model between sample points of the secondary ReV y(x) separated by a distance xl xk

22 Table 1 Descriptive and cross-statistics of rainfall and elevation Variable Mean Standard deviation Correlation coefficient Significance =0.05 Elevation Annual Winter Spring Summer Fall 1,228 5.18 3.7 4.2 3.4 3.1 910 0.78 0.62 0.92 1.06 1.02

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0.44 0.34 0.77 0.15 0.2

Yes Yes Yes No No

strong in the north at this time of year. In spring, the correlation coefficient was strong, r =0.77, and it was the highest among all seasons. This suggests that the spring rainfall increases positively with elevation (orographic), and it is the only season that showed a strong relationship between rainfall and elevation. In summer, the correlation coefficient was not statistically significant, r =0.15, and the rainfall was mainly related to monsoons. In fall, the correlation coefficient was negative and not statistically significant, r = 0.2, which may indicate an inverse correlation between these two variables. In addition, if not under the monsoons, the region receives the least amount of rainfall during fall season.

zy (xi xk) = cross-variogram model between sample points of the primary ReV z(x) and secondary ReV y(x) separated by a distance xi xk zy (xk x0) = cross-variogram model between sample points of the primary ReV z(x) and secondary ReV y(x) with unknown point x0 separated by a distance xk x0 The system of Eq. 9 gives (n + m +2) linear equations in (n + m +2) unknowns (n, m, 1 and 2). The variance of the estimation error is expressed by: s2
n X i 1

Variogram for elevation The experimental direct variogram was computed for weather station elevations for the spherical model using GSLIB program (Deutsch and Journel 1992). Maintaining the assumptions of stationarity and isotropism were desirable to simplify model fitting during cross-validation. The root mean square error (RMSE) value is close to one, and mean estimation error (MEE) value is close to zero, which indicates an excellent model in terms of estimation accuracy (Cressie 1993; Clark and Harper 2000). The sensitivity of the model cross-validation results for the variogram model parameters indicated that the model fitting was important for distances between 0 and approximately 115 km. For distances greater than 115 km, the results were not sensitive (Fig. 2). However, an isotropic spherical model was selected based on the cross-validation results as the best representation of the spatial structure of the elevation as shown in Fig. 1. This model was defined with no nugget, as sill was equal to the sample variance of 922,600 m2 and the range was 115 km.

li g z x i x 0

m X k 1

wk g zy xk x0 m1

10

In our case, rainfall characteristics in the southwest region of Saudi Arabia are mainly attributed to the elevation factor. So the cokriging method will be taken into consideration to detect the rainfallelevation relationship.

Preliminary statistical analysis Sixty-three weather stations for average annual and seasonal rainfall records, which were discussed and analyzed, have been selected in the southwest region of Saudi Arabia (Subyani 2004). These data are called the primary variables. Elevation values, the secondary variables, were provided from sites at which the weather stations were located. These elevation values, given in meters above sea level, are contoured in Fig. 1. The elevation data were considered to be normally distributed. Table 1 shows the results of the descriptive and crossstatistics of the annual and seasonal rainfall and elevation data. It also indicates whether the respective correlation coefficients (r) were statistically significant. For annual rainfall, the r value of 0.44 is significance. The correlation coefficient in winter, r =0.34, was statistically significant, but it is low. However, the weather stations are located at sites far away from the source of the moisture (Mediterranean), and the Red Sea effect is weak in the south and

1200

(h) for Elevation (X1000) m2

1000 800 600 400 200 0 0 100 200 300 400 Sample SV Spher. Model

Range = 115 Km Sill = 922600 m2

Distance (Km)

Fig. 2 Experimental and fitted variogram model for elevation

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Fig. 3 Sample cross-variogram and fitted model for rainfall and elevation for annual data

Fig. 5 Sample cross-variogram and fitted model for rainfall and elevation for spring data

Cross-variogram models for rainfall and elevation Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 show the experimental and crossvariogram models for natural logs of annual and seasonal rainfall with elevation. The number of sample pairs in each case was the same as in the direct variogram. These figures also show the PDC curve computed to check the positive definite condition. In addition, cross-validation statistics were used to find the suitable cross-variogram model. For the annual case, the increase in the values of sample cross-variogram for distances from 0 to 130 km indicated a positive spatial cross-correlation between annual rainfall and elevation. For distances greater than 130 km, the crossvariogram sill is approximately as the same as the sample covariance (Fig. 3). A negative cross-correlation was observed for distances between 130 and 220 km. This may be due to the weakness of the correlation, r =0.44, and the fact that the annual rainfall contains different temporal rainfall mechanisms. In winter (Fig. 4), the positive sample cross-variogram between winter rainfall and elevation increased for dis-

tances from 0 to approximately 50 km. The crosscorrelation beyond 50 km fluctuated with distance. This low range of cross-variogram is due to the weak correlation between winter rainfall and elevation (r =0.34). In spring, the positive sample cross-variogram between spring rainfall and elevation increased for distances from 0 to approximately 140 km (Fig. 5). This wide range is due to the strong correlation between spring rainfall and elevation (r = 0.77). In other words, such a strong correlation confirmed that the spring rainfall was mainly due to the orographic factors. In summer, the low value of correlation between summer rainfall and elevation, r =0.15, made the sample crossvariogram start with negative slope for distances from 0 to approximately 40 km and increase to the distance of 132 km (Fig. 6). The cross-variogram may take negative values; whereas a direct variogram is always positive (Journel and Huijbregts 1978). This negative value indicates that the summer rainfall increase corresponds to a decrease in elevation. This inconsistency in relation between summer rainfall and elevation is mainly due to monsoonal rainfall.
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Fig. 4 Sample cross-variogram and fitted model for rainfall and elevation for winter data

Fig. 6 Sample cross-variogram and fitted model for rainfall and elevation for summer data

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Fig. 7 Sample cross-variogram for rainfall and elevation for fall data

In fall, the negative correlation, r = 0.2, between fall rainfall and elevation (Fig. 7), showed a high amount of scatter sample cross-variogram, and no obvious theoretical cross-variogram models were evident. However, these negative values indicated that a positive increase in fall rainfall corresponded, on the average, to a decrease in elevation, and this was due to the fact that the fall season is a transitional period between the monsoon rainfall in summer and the Mediterranean rainfall in winter. Table 2 lists the parameters of the cross-variogram models and the cross-validation statistics for all annual and seasonal cases. The range of influence from crossvariogram of annual data is increased more slightly than the range of annual variogram, but the other model characteristics are still the same. In winter and spring, the crossvariogram models show more consistency in their structural parameters than their variogram models due to the effect of elevation. For example, exponential variogram models with nugget become more consistent in their shapes with spherical cross-variogram models and absence of the nugget effect and that the range of influence is increased. Also, the MEE for the seasonal cross-variogram models is closer to zero compared to the MEE of the seasonal directvariogram models, and the RMSE for the seasonal crossvariogram models is closer to 1.0 compared to RMSE for the seasonal direct-variogram models. However, summer cross-variogram becomes less consistent with lower range

and presence of the nugget effect due to the insignificant effect of elevation in this season. The PDC curves were computed for the annual and seasonal cross-variogram models to check the positive definite conditions. With the exception of the fall season, most of the cases that showed the plotted PDC curve provided a close fit to the sample cross-variogram for the small distances, and the absolute experimental values for the cross-variogram were smaller than the absolute values of the PDC curve for most of the distances computed. However, the PDC curve may give a relative indication for the degree of correlation. For example, in spring, the PDC curve is closer to the cross-variogram model curve, but in other seasons, it moves farther from the cross-variogram model curve depending on the degree of correlation as shown in Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Cokriging for rainfall and elevation The cokriging interpolation technique was applied to both annual and seasonal data estimate rainfall and its variances. With the exception of the fall season, the strength of the influence of the elevation in the estimation accuracy depends on the degree of correlation between rainfall and elevation. For annual rainfall (Fig. 8), cokriging estimates show that the isohyets values increased gradually with elevation. Cokriging estimation variances indicated similar trends in estimation accuracy of the kriging throughout the study area. Moreover, estimation variances (Fig. 9) were reduced in average in the east. In winter, cokriging estimates show very little effect of the topographic factor in the mountain area, and the cokriging contours follow these topographic changes as shown in Fig. 10. This may be due to existence of no significant effect on elevation factor (i.e., r =0.34). The cokriging estimation variances (Fig. 11) show high variances in the north part of mountain due to the Mediterranean effect in winter and low variance in the east part of the study area. In spring, cokriging estimates gave more detailed information as shown in Fig. 12, and the elevation factor

Table 2 Structures and cross-validation statistics for fitted cross-variogram models Variable Annual Winter Spring Summer Fall NA not applicable Model Spherical Exponential NA Nugget 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 NA Sill 380 218 786 310 NA Number 62 62 62 62 62 Range (km) 130 50 140 30 NA MEE 0.02 0.035 0.07 0.02 NA RMSE 0.85 1.1 0.81 1.03 NA

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Fig. 8 Isohyetal map of cokriging estimates for annual rainfall (mm)

Fig. 10 Isohyetal map of cokriging estimates of winter (mm)

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Fig. 11 Cokriging estimation variances of winter rainfall (mm2)

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Fig. 14 Isohyetal map of cokriging estimates of summer (mm)

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Fig. 13 Cokriging estimation variances of spring (mm2)

Fig. 15 Cokriging estimation variances of summer (mm2)

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was clear in the mountain area. Isohyetal lines in the cokriging map followed roughly the main features of elevation. However, the estimation variances (Fig. 13) show that there is no change in their values, which indicates that the spring rainfall is of orographic type. In summer, there is no elevation influence which is not significant at this time of the year (Fig. 14). In addition, the cokriging variance estimation (Fig. 15) shows no change. Generally, in all time cases, the cokriging method gave a little more information about rainfall values than did the other methods, and its accuracy is related to the degree of correlation between rainfall and elevation. Moreover, even though the correlation is not significant (winter and summer), the isohyetal values of cokriged estimates provide more detail concerning rainfall values with elevation changes. However, in the east and northeast areas, at low elevations lacking information, there appears little reduction in estimation variances.

&

and Plateau) and stationary in time scale (monthly or seasonal) within each defined region. This fact can reduce the uncertainty of the results Due to the complexity and type of rainfall formation in general, adding more secondary variables such as temperature, distance from the moisture source, wind speed and direction, and pressure, in addition to elevation, could improve the accuracy of cokriging estimates

Acknowledgment The authors express their appreciation to King Abdulaziz University and Ministry of Water and Electricity in Saudi Arabia for providing necessary facilities during the course of this study. The comments of the reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

References
Aboufirassi M, Mario M (1984) Co-kriging of aquifer transmissivities from field measurement of transmissivity and specific capacity. Math Geol 16:1635 Ahmed S, Marsily G (1987) Comparison of geostatistical methods for estimating transmissivity using data on transmissivity and specific capacity. Water Resour Res 23:17171737 Alehaideb I (1985) Rainfall distribution in the southwest of Saudi Arabia. Ph.D., Arizona State University, Arizona, USA, p 215 Christakos G (1992) Random field models in earth sciences. Academic, NY, p 474 Chua S, Bras RL (1982) Optimal estimators of mean annual rainfall in regions of orographic influences. J Hydrol 57:2348 Clark I, Harper W (2000) Practical geostatistics. Ecosse North America Lic, Columbus, Ohio, USA, p 342 Cressie N (1993) Statistics for spatial data. Wiley, New York Deutsch C, Journel A (1992) Geostatistical software library and user s guide. Oxford University Press, New York, USA Dingman S, Seely D, Reynolds R (1988) Application of kriging to estimate mean annual rainfall in a region of orographic influence. Water Res Bull 24:329339 Hevesi J, Flint A, Istok J (1992) Rainfall estimation in mountainous terrain using multivariate geostatistics: part 1 and 2. J Appl Meteor 31:661688 Johnson GL, Hanson CL (1995) Topographic and atmospheric influences on rainfall variability over a mountainous watershed. J Appl Meteor 34:6874 Journel A, Huijbregts C (1978) Mining geostatistics. Academic, New York, p 600 Myers D (1982) Matrix formulation of co-kriging. Math Geol 14:249 257 Phillips DL, Dolph J, Marks D (1992) A comparison of geostatistical procedures for spatial analysis of rainfall in mountainous terrain. Meteorology 58:119141 Subyani A (2004) Geostatistical annual and seasonal mean rainfall pattern in southwest Saudi Arabia. Hydrol Sci J 49:803817

Conclusions A multivariate geostatistics method was developed to detect effect of the elevation factor as a covariant variable adding to rainfall as a primary variable on the basis of annual and seasonal data. The major conclusions of this study can be summarized as follows: & The rainfallelevation cross-correlation revealed a spherical cross-variogram model for annual, winter, and spring seasons, whereas the exponential cross-variogram model was fitted to summer season. For the fall season, no obvious theoretical variogram model was evident. The closer the PDC curve fit the cross-variogram model curve, the higher correlation between rainfall and elevation, which is in the case of spring season The cokriging method gave little more information about rainfall values and its accuracy was related to the degree of correlation between rainfall and elevation. Moreover, even though the correlation is not significant, the isohyet values of cokriged estimates provided more information on rainfall changes with elevation This study was global application of geostatistics. However, we proposed to study an area like southwest region of Saudi Arabia separately according to homogeneity in geographic features (i.e., Tihamah, Mountain,

&

&