Meteorological interaction between drought/oceanic indicators and rainfed maize yield in an arid agricultural zone in northwest Mexico

The goal of the study was to determine the inter-relationship between meteorological drought (Md), oceanic indicators, and yield of rainfed maize (YRM) in the spring–summer agricultural season (S-S YRM) for Sinaloa. The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) on a 1-month scale (SPEI-1) was obtained for the period 1980–2012 from the webpage of the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC). The annual S-S YRM from six areas that cover five Sinaloa municipalities with the largest maize production data were obtained from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) and of the Agrifood and Fisheries Information Service (SIAP). The monthly average variations of the following parameters were obtained from the NOAA database for the same period: Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Oceanic El Niño Index (ONI), geopotential height (GH) at 700 hPa, and sea surface temperature (SST) of the equatorial and Caribbean seas. From these data, Pearson correlations (rP) were calculated for the following comparisons: Z anomalies of SPEI-1 vs. S-S YRM and PDO, AMO, and ONI vs. S-S YRM. The most notable results were the following: (1) since the minimum values of the coefficient of correlation between SPEI-1 and S-S YRM were registered at the sites “El Varejonal” (August = 0.013) and “Badiraguato” (September = 0.028), it is recommended that the planting time be shifted and (2) − SST phase anomalies in the equatorial and Caribbean seas, with magnitudes from − 0.05 to − 0.55 °C year⁻¹ can be useful for estimating changes in S-S YRM in Sinaloa. This methodology can be applied to any region of the world.