Combined statistical and spatially distributed hydrological model for evaluating future drought indices in Virginia

The results of the ensemble mean of SSI indicated that there was an overall increase in agricultural drought occurrences projected in the New (>1.3 times) and Rappahannock (>1.13 times) river basins due to increases in evapotranspiration and surface and groundwater flow. However, MSDI and MPDSI exhibited a decrease in projected future drought, despite increases in precipitation, which suggests that it is essential to use hybrid-modeling approaches and to interpret application-specific drought indices that consider both precipitation and temperature changes.