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Drought index predictability for historical and future periods across the Southern plain of Nepal Himalaya

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Abstract

Drought episodes across the Himalayas are inevitable due to rapidly increasing atmospheric temperatures and uncertainties in rainfall patterns. Tarai of Nepal is a tropical region located in the foothills of the Central Himalaya as a country’s food granary with a contribution of over 50% to the entire country’s agricultural production. However, there is a lack of detailed studies exploring the spatiotemporal occurrence of drought in these regions under the changing climate. In this study, we used the ensemble of nine climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) under two shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs), namely SSP245 (an intermediate development pathway) and SSP585 (a high development pathway), to assess anticipated drought during the mid-century. We used bias-corrected gridded data from the Worldclim to project drought events by the end of the mid-century based on the historical period (1989–2018). We computed historical and projected Thornthwaite moisture index (TMI) to evaluate soil moisture conditions on a seasonal scale for the Tarai region’s Eastern, Central, and Western parts. The model ensemble projected a significant increase in precipitation and temperature for the entire Tarai by the end of mid-century. However, the winter and spring seasons are projected to suffer precipitation deficiency and a temperature rise. Our results indicated that the Eastern Tarai would likely experience a decrease in winter precipitation. We emphasize that the presented spatiotemporal pattern of the MI will be instrumental in addressing the irrigation facility’s needs, choice, and rotation of crops under the changing climate scenarios and in improving our mitigation measures and adaptation plans for sustainability of the agriculture in drought-prone areas.

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Acknowledgements

Also, the authors are grateful for the valuable platform of the Society for Conservation Biology Nepal (SCB Nepal).

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2020YFC1807103), the 973 Program (No. 2013CB733402), and the Special Fund for the Environmental Protection Research in the Public Interest of China (201409030).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Suraj Shah, Xianfeng Song & Telesphore Habiyakare

  2. Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur Kathmandu, Nepal

    Achyut Tiwari

  3. Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Texas A&M University, El Paso, USA

    Rocky Talchabahdel

  4. Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Oklahoma State University, 008C Agricultural Hall, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

    Arjun Adhikari

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Correspondence to Xianfeng Song.

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Shah, S., Tiwari, A., Song, X. et al. Drought index predictability for historical and future periods across the Southern plain of Nepal Himalaya. Environ Monit Assess 194, 642 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10275-6

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