Forecasting of Standardized Precipitation Index Using Hybrid Models: A Case Study of Cape Town, South Africa

Droughts have negative impacts on agricultural productivity and economic growth. Effective monitoring and accurate forecasting of drought occurrences and trends are crucial for minimizing drought losses and mitigating their spatial and temporal effects. In this study, trend dynamics in monthly total rainfall time series measured at Cape Town International Airport were analyzed using the Mann–Kendall (MK) test, Modified Mann–Kendall (MMK) test and innovative trend analysis (ITA). Additionally, we utilized a hybrid prediction method that combined the model with the complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) technique, the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, and the long short-term memory (LSTM) network (i.e., CEEMDAN-ARIMA-LSTM) to forecast SPI values of 6-, 9-, and 12-months using rainfall data between 1995 and 2020 from Cape Town International Airport meteorological rainfall stations. In terms of trend analysis of the monthly total rainfall, the MK and MMK tests detected a significant decreasing trend with negative z-scores of −3.7541 and −4.0773, respectively. The ITA also indicated a significant downward trend of total monthly rainfall, especially for values between 10 and 110 mm/month. The SPI forecasting results show that the hybrid model (CEEMDAN-ARIMA-LSTM) had the highest prediction accuracy of the models at all SPI timescales. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values of the CEEMDAN-ARIMA-LSTM hybrid model are 0.121, 0.044, and 0.042 for SPI-6, SPI-9, and SPI-12, respectively. The directional symmetry for this hybrid model is 0.950, 0.917, and 0.950, for SPI-6, SPI-9, and SPI-12, respectively. This indicates that this is the most suitable model for forecasting long-term drought conditions in Cape Town. Additionally, models that use a decomposition step and those that are built by combining independent models seem to produce improved SPI prediction accuracy.