Spatiotemporal Analysis of Compound Agrometeorological Drought and Hot Events in India Using a Standardized Index
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 26, Issue 7
Abstract
Meteorological droughts abetted by hot events could instigate an agricultural drought that eventually affects crop yield. Different types of droughts may coexist or occur in succession. A single index based on one particular variable may not be sufficient to quantify such compound drought events. Therefore, this study embedded drought indexes ofstandardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized soil-moisture index (SSI), and standardized temperature index (STI) with Gaussian copula functions to study compound agrometeorological drought and hot events in India from 1948 to 2014. By standardizing the joint probability of the SPI, SSI, and STI time series, the standardized compound drought and hot index (SCDHI) was developed. The SCDHI values in the monsoon months of different climatic zones have a strong correlation of about 0.95 with other well-established indexes such as the standardized compound event indicator (SCEI), which incorporates SPI and STI, and the multivariate standardized drought index (MSDI), which incorporates SPI and SSI. Based on the areal extent, 1965–1966, 1972, 1987, and 2002 were identified as significant compound drought years in India. The index also identified three successive compound events of the 2012–2014 northest monsoon in the southern peninsular region. A notable increase in the frequency of compound drought and hot events was found post-2000. The case studies of the major drought events and the dependent pattern of SCDHI on its constituent indexes indicate that SCDHI performs well as an indicator of compound agrometeorological and hot events across different climatic regions and in both southwest and northeast monsoons.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Indian National Committee on Climate Change (INCCC), Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, Grant No. 28/8/2016-R&D/308-336 (dated February 9, 2018). The authors thank the reviewers and the editor for spending their valuable time to improve this work.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 26 • Issue 7 • July 2021
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Received: Oct 20, 2020
Accepted: Mar 5, 2021
Published online: Apr 21, 2021
Published in print: Jul 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Sep 21, 2021
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