Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Analysis of Spatio-temporal Characteristics and Regional Frequency of Droughts in the Southern Peninsula of India

  • Published:
Water Resources Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A detailed regional drought study is carried out in the southern peninsula of India to characterize the spatio-temporal nature of droughts and to predict the drought magnitudes for various probabilities in the homogeneous drought regions. The method of several random initializations of the cluster centres of the K-means algorithm is suggested for the identification of the initial regions in the context of drought regionalization, which is shown to perform better than the initialization from the Ward’s algorithm and the Ward’s algorithm itself. The peninsula is classified into seven spatially well-separated homogeneous drought regions. The robust L-moment framework is used for the regional frequency analysis of drought magnitudes computed using the standardized precipitation index. The Pearson type III is found to be appropriate for regional drought frequency analysis in six of the regions, while the robust Wakeby distribution is suggested for one region. Low magnitude droughts are frequent and dominant in the northern part of west coast, the north-eastern coast and its adjoining inland region, while high magnitude droughts are less in number and are experienced in semi-arid central part, southern part of western coast, south-eastern part and north-western inland region. The spatial maps of drought magnitudes indicate that at higher return periods (100 and 200 years) the south-eastern part of the peninsula is likely to encounter high magnitude droughts, while the central region is likely to experience the same at lower return periods (10 and 50 years). Hence these regions need to be given special importance in the drought mitigation planning activities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bhat GS (2006) The Indian drought of 2002—a sub-seasonal phenomenon? Q J R Meteorol Soc 132:2583–2602

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorso B, Bordi I, Cancelliere A, Rossi G, Sutera A (2003) Spatial variability of drought: an analysis of the SPI in Sicily. Water Resour Manag 17:273–296

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bordi I, Fraedrich K, Jiang JM, Sutera A (2004) Spatio-temporal variability of dry and wet periods in eastern China. Theor Appl Climatol 79:81–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bravar L, Kavvas ML (1991) On the physics of droughts. II Analysis and simulation of the interaction of atmospheric and hydrologic processes during droughts J Hydrol 129(1–4):299–330

    Google Scholar 

  • Celebi ME, Kingravi HA (2012) Deterministic initialization of the K-means algorithm using hierarchical clustering. Int J Pattern Recognit Artif Intell 26(7):1250018

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dingman SL (2002) Physical hydrology, second edn. Prentice Hall Inc., New Jersey

    Google Scholar 

  • Gadgil S, Gowri R, Yadumani (1988) Coherent rainfall zones: case study for Karnataka. Proc Indian Acad Sci (Earth Planet Sci) 97(1):63–79

    Google Scholar 

  • Guttman NB (1999) Accepting the standardized precipitation index: a calculation algorithm. J Am Water Resour Assoc 35:311–322

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hartigan JA, Wong MA (1979) A K-means clustering algorithm. Appl Stat 28:100–108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hosking JRM (2013) Regional frequency analysis using L-moments. R package, version 2.5. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lmomRFA

  • Hosking JRM, Wallis JR (1993) Some statistics useful in regional frequency analysis. Water Resour Res 29(2):271–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hosking JRM, Wallis JR (1997) Regional frequency analysis: an approach based on L-moments. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Huang S, Chang J, Huang Q, Chen Y (2014) Spatio-temporal changes and frequency analysis of drought in the Wei River basin, China. Water Resour Manag 28:3095–3110

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jain SK, Agarwal PK, Singh VP (2007) Hydrology and water resources of India. Springer, The Netherlands

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim TW, Valde JB, Yoo C (2003) Nonparametric approach for estimating return periods of droughts in arid regions. J Hydrol Eng 85:237–246

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim D-W, Byun H-R, Choi K-S, Oh S-B (2011) A spatiotemporal analysis of historical droughts in Korea. J Appl Meteorol Clim 50:1895–1912

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee SM, Byun HR, Tanaka HL (2012) Spatiotemporal characteristics of drought occurrences over Japan. J Appl Meteorol Climatol 51:1087–1098

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales, paper presented at 8th conference on applied climatology. American Meteorological Society, Anaheim, CA

    Google Scholar 

  • Mishra AK, Desai VR (2005) Spatial and temporal drought analysis in the Kansabati River basin, India. Int J River Basin Manag 3(1):31–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391(1–2):202–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Modarres R (2010) Regional dry spells frequency analysis by L-moment and multivariate analysis. Water Resour Manag 24:2365–2380

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Naresh Kumar M, Murthy CS, Sesha Sai MVR, Roy PS (2012) Spatiotemporal analysis of meteorological drought variability in the Indian region using standardized precipitation index. Meteorol Appl 19:256–264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Niranjan Kumar K, Rajeevan M, Pai DS, Srivastava AK, Preethi B (2013) On the observed variability of monsoon droughts over India. Weather and Climate Extremes 1:42–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nunez JH, Verbist K, Wallis JR, Schaefer MG, Morales L, Cornelis WM (2011) Regional frequency analysis for mapping drought events in north-Central Chile. J Hydrol 405:352–366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pai DS, Sridhar L, Guhathakurta P, Hatwar HR (2011) District-wide drought climatology of the southwest monsoon season over India based on standardized precipitation index (SPI). Nat Hazards 59:1797–1813

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pandey RP, Ramasastri KS (2001) Relationship between the common climatic parameters and average drought frequency. Hydrol Process 15:1019–1032

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patel R, Chopra P, Dadhwal VK (2007) Analyzing spatial patterns of meteorological drought using standardized precipitation index. Meteorol Appl 14:329–336

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ponce VM, Pandey RP, Ercan S (2000) Characterization of drought across the climatic spectrum. J Hydrol Eng 5(2):222–224

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team (2013) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R foundation for statistical computing, Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org/

  • Rad AM, Khalili D (2015) Appropriateness of clustered Raingauge stations for spatio-temporal meteorological drought applications. Water Resour Manag 29:4157–4171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rajeevan M, Bhate J, Kale JD, Lal B (2005) Development of a high resolution daily gridded rainfall data for the Indian Region (version 2). Meteorol Monogr Climatol 22/2005, India Meteorol Dept, New Delhi

  • Rao AR, Srinivas VV (2006) Regionalization of watersheds by hybrid-cluster analysis. J Hydrol 318:37–56

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raziei T, Saghafian B, Paulo AA, Pereira LS, Bordi I (2009) Spatial patterns and temporal variability of drought in western Iran. Water Resour Manag 23:439–455

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos J, Pulido-Calvo I, Portela MM (2010) Spatial and temporal variability of droughts in Portugal. Water Resour Res 46:w03503

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos JF, Portela MM, Pulido-Calvo I (2011) Regional frequency analysis of droughts in Portugal. Water Resour Manag 25:3537–3558

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steinley D, Brusco MJ (2007) Initialization k-means batch clustering: a critical evaluation of several techniques. J Clasif 24:99–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas T, Nayak PC, Ghosh NC (2015) Spatiotemporal Analysis of Drought Characteristics in the Bundelkhand Region of Central India using the Standardized Precipitation Index. J Hydrol Eng. doi:10.1061(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001189

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2005) Establishing a drought index incorporating evapotranspiration. European Water 9(10):3–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional drought assessment based on the reconnaissance drought index (RDI). Water Resour Manag 21(5):821–833

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Nalbantis I, Vangelis H, Verbeiren B, Huysmans M, Tychon B, Jacquemin I, Canters F, Vanderhaegen S, Engelen G, Poelmans L, De Becker P, Batelaan O (2013) A system-based paradigm of drought analysis for operational management. Water Resour Manag 27(15):5281–5297

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • UN (1990) What can be done about drought? International decade for natural disaster reduction. IDNDR Secretariat, Geneva

    Google Scholar 

  • Vicente-Serrano SM (2006) Spatial and temporal analysis of droughts in the Iberian peninsula (1910–2000). Hydrol Sci 51(1):83–97

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vicente-Serrano SM, Lopez-Moreno JI (2005) Hydrological response to different time scales of climatological drought: an evaluation of the standardized precipitation index in a mountainous Mediterranean basin. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 9:523–533

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vicente-Serrano SM, Begueria S, Lorenzo-Lacruz J (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23:1696–1718

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ward JH Jr (1963) Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function. J Am Stat Ass 58:236–244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilhite DA, Svoboda MD (2000) Drought early warning systems in the context of drought preparedness and mitigation. In: Wilhite DA, Sivakumar MVK, Wood DA (eds) Early warning Systems for Drought Preparedness and Drought Management, WMO/TD no, vol 1037. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 1–21

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, for providing the necessary facilities for carrying out this research work. We are also thankful to the Editor, the Associate Editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their encouraging comments and constructive suggestions, which were very useful in improving the quality of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras|, Chennai, 600036, India

    Srimanta Ghosh & K. Srinivasan

Authors
  1. Srimanta Ghosh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. K. Srinivasan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Srimanta Ghosh.

Ethics declarations

The manuscript being submitted: has not been published before; is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; has been approved by all co-authors as well as by the responsible authorities. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ghosh, S., Srinivasan, K. Analysis of Spatio-temporal Characteristics and Regional Frequency of Droughts in the Southern Peninsula of India . Water Resour Manage 30, 3879–3898 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-016-1396-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-016-1396-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation