Abstract
Drought is amongst the most precarious phenomena that cause serious repercussions, especially over the agriculture-dominated regions. A detailed assessment of droughts is necessary to develop robust frameworks for combating its ill effects. This study presents an analysis of meteorological drought characteristics (frequency, severity and persistence) using precipitation data of twenty-four districts for 1954–2013 over the Narmada River Basin, which is located in the core of the Indian Monsoon region and has great agricultural importance. Further, the entire duration is divided into two epochs, i.e. 1954–83 and 1984–2013, for comparative analysis. A simplified rainfall index (RIS) is proposed, which is based on the concept of percentage deviation from normal monsoon rainfall along with the uniform transition from moderate to severe and severe to extreme droughts. The basin is found to be prone to droughts and the drought frequency varied from once in three to 8 years over different districts. The droughts are more frequent and severe in the western portions of the basin as compared to the eastern portions. The majority of the districts have undergone droughts persisting for 3 years at least once. The epoch-wise analysis reveals a significantly higher frequency, severity and persistence of droughts in the recent epoch. The results of trend analysis using the Modified Mann–Kendall test indicate an increasing trend of droughts over twenty-one districts and significantly increasing over eleven districts. The information reported in this study will be helpful for proper planning and management of water resources over the basin and hence, reduce the pernicious effects of droughts.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The district-wise rainfall data are procured from India Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune, India. The data used in this study is not openly available. However, it can be purchased from IMD at a nominal cost.
References
Aadhar S, Mishra V (2020) Increased drought risk in South Asia under warming climate: Implications of uncertainty in potential evapotranspiration estimates. J Hydrometeorol. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-19-0224.1
Abramowitz M, Stegun IA (1965) Handbook of mathematical functions with formulas, graphs, and mathematical tables. In US Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards Applied Mathematics Series, p 55
Achugbu IC, Anugwo SC (2016) Drought trend analysis in kano using standardized precipitation index. FUOYE J Eng Technol 1:105–110
Adimalla N, Li P, Venkatayogi S (2018a) Hydrogeochemical evaluation of groundwater quality for drinking and irrigation purposes and integrated interpretation with water quality index studies. Environ Process 5(2):363–383
Adimalla N, Vasa SK, Li P (2018b) Evaluation of groundwater quality, Peddavagu in Central Telangana (PCT), South India: an insight of controlling factors of fluoride enrichment. Model Earth Syst Environ 4(2):841–852
Ahmed K, Shahid S, Nawaz N (2018) Impacts of climate variability and change on seasonal drought characteristics of Pakistan. Atmos Res 214:364–374
Almedeij J (2014) Drought analysis for kuwait using standardized precipitation index. Scie World J 2014:451841
Alsumaiei AA (2020) Monitoring hydrometeorological droughts using a simplified precipitation index. Climate 8(2):19
Amirataee B, Montaseri M (2017) The performance of SPI and PNPI in analyzing the spatial and temporal trend of dry and wet periods over Iran. Nat Hazards 86(1):89–106
Amrit K, Pandey RP, Mishra SK (2018a) Assessment of meteorological drought characteristics over Central India. Sustain Water Resour Manage 4(4):999–1010
Amrit K, Pandey RP, Mishra SK (2018b) Characteristics of meteorological droughts in northwestern India. Nat Hazards 94(2):561–582
Amrit K, Mishra SK, Pandey RP, Himanshu SK, Singh S (2019) Standardized precipitation index-based approach to predict environmental flow condition. Ecohydrology 12(7):e2127
Angelidis P, Maris F, Kotsovinos N, Hrissanthou V (2012) Computation of drought index SPI with alternative distribution functions. Water Resour Manage 26(9):2453–2473
Bayissa Y, Maskey S, Tadesse T, Van Andel SJ, Moges S, Van Griensven A, Solomatine D (2018) Comparison of the performance of six drought indices in characterizing historical drought for the upper Blue Nile basin. Ethiop Geosci 8(3):81
Bhalme HN, Mooley DA (1980) Large-scale droughts/floods and monsoon circulation. Mon Weather Rev 108(8):1197–1211
Blain GC, Meschiatti MC (2015) Inadequacy of the gamma distribution to calculate the standardized precipitation index. Rev Br Engen Agrí Amb 19(12):1129–1135
Botai CM, Botai JO, Dlamini LC, Zwane NS, Phaduli E (2016) Characteristics of droughts in South Africa: a case study of free state and north west provinces. Water 8(10):439
Bryant SJ, Arnell NW, Law FM (1992) The long-term context for the current hydrological drought. In Institute of Water and Environmental Management (IWEM) Conference on the management of scarce water resources
Byun HR, Wilhite DA (1999) Objective quantification of drought severity and duration. J Clim 12(9):2747–2756
Caloiero T (2014) Analysis of daily rainfall concentration in New Zealand. Nat Hazards 72(2):389–404
Chen ST, Kuo CC, Yu PS (2009) Historical trends and variability of meteorological droughts in Taiwan. Hydrol Sci J 54(3):430–441
Dabanlı İ, Mishra AK, Şen Z (2017) Long-term spatio-temporal drought variability in Turkey. J Hydrol 552:779–792
Dracup JA, Lee KS, Paulson EG Jr (1980) On the definition of droughts. Water Resour Res 16(2):297–302
Duhan D, Pandey A (2013) Statistical analysis of long term spatial and temporal trends of precipitation during 1901–2002 at Madhya Pradesh, India. Atmos Res 122:136–149
Emiru T, Naqvi HR, Athick MA (2018) Anthropogenic impact on land use land cover: influence on weather and vegetation in Bambasi Wereda. Ethiop Spat Inform Res 26(4):427–436
Ghosh KG (2018) Geo-statistical assessment of the intensity, duration, frequency and trend of drought over Gangetic West Bengal. Eastern India. In Topics in Hydrometerology, IntechOpen
Ghosh KG (2019) Spatial and temporal appraisal of drought jeopardy over the Gangetic West Bengal, eastern India. Geoenviron Disast 6(1):1
Gibbs WJ, Maher JV (1967) Rainfall deciles as drought indicators. Australian Bureau of Meteorology Bulletin no. 48, Commonwealth of Australia
González J, Valdés JB (2006) New drought frequency index: definition and comparative performance analysis. Water Resour Res 42(11):W11421
Gosain AK, Rao S, Basuray D (2006) Climate change impact assessment on hydrology of Indian river basins. Curr Sci 90(3):346–353
Gosain AK, Rao S, Arora A (2011) Climate change impact assessment of water resources of India. Curr Sci 101(3):356–371
Gupta RK (2001) River basin management: a case study of Narmada valley development with special reference to the Sardar Sarovar Project in Gujarat, India. Int J Water Resour Dev 17(1):55–78
Guttman NB (1999) Accepting the standardized precipitation index: a calculation algorithm. JAWRA J Am Water Resour Assoc 35(2):311–322
Hamed KH, Rao AR (1998) A modified Mann-Kendall trend test for autocorrelated data. J Hydrol 204(1–4):182–196
Hayes M (2006) Drought Indices. Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia. John Wiley & Sons Inc, pp 13–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/0471743984.vse8593
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 Manage 28(10):3095–3110
Ju XS, Yang XW, Chen LJ, Wang YM (1997) Research on determination of indices and division of regional flood/drought grades in China. Quarter J Appl Meteorol 8(1):26–33
Keyantash J, Dracup JA (2002) The quantification of drought: an evaluation of drought indices. Bull Am Meteor Soc 83(8):1167–1180
Khadr M (2016) Temporal and spatial analysis of meteorological drought characteristics in the upper Blue Nile river region. Hydrol Res 48(1):265–276
Kumar MN, 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(2):256–264
Kundu S, Khare D, Mondal A, Mishra PK (2015) Analysis of spatial and temporal variation in rainfall trend of Madhya Pradesh, India (1901–2011). Environ Earth Sci 73(12):8197–8216
Kundu S, Khare D, Mondal A (2017) Past, present and future land use changes and their impact on water balance. J Environ Manage 197:582–596
Kutiel H, Maheras P, Guika S (1996) Circulation and extreme rainfall conditions in the eastern Mediterranean during the last century. Int J Climatol 16(1):73–92
Li P, Qian H (2018a) Water resource development and protection in loess areas of the world: a summary to the thematic issue of water in loess. Environ Earth Sci 77(24):796
Li P, Qian H (2018b) Water resources research to support a sustainable China. Int J Water Resour Dev 34(3):327–336
Li P, Wu J (2019) Sustainable living with risks: meeting the challenges. Human Ecol Risk Assess Int J 25(1–2):1–10
Li P, Qian H, Wu J (2014) Accelerate research on land creation. Nature 510(7503):29–31
Li P, Wu J, Qian H (2016) Preliminary assessment of hydraulic connectivity between river water and shallow groundwater and estimation of their transfer rate during dry season in the Shidi River. China Environ Earth Sci 75(2):99
Li P, Tian R, Xue C, Wu J (2017) Progress, opportunities, and key fields for groundwater quality research under the impacts of human activities in China with a special focus on western China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24(15):13224–13234
Lutz AF, ter Maat HW, Wijngaard RR, Biemans H, Syed A, Shrestha AB, Wester P, Immerzeel WW (2019) South Asian river basins in a 1.5 °C warmer world. Reg Environ Change 19(3):833–847
Mahajan DR, Dodamani BM (2015) Trend analysis of drought events over upper Krishna basin in Maharashtra. Aqua Proced 4:1250–1257
Mallya G, Mishra V, Niyogi D, Tripathi S, Govindaraju RS (2016) Trends and variability of droughts over the Indian monsoon region. Weather Climate Extr 12:43–68
McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In proceedings of the 8th conference on applied climatology, 17–22 January 1993, CA
Mehr AD, Vaheddoost B (2020) Identification of the trends associated with the SPI and SPEI indices across Ankara. Turkey Theor Appl Climatol 139(3–4):1531–1542
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391(1–2):202–216
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2011) Drought modeling–A review. J Hydrol 403(1–2):157–175
Mishra AK, Singh VP, Desai VR (2009) Drought characterization: a probabilistic approach. Stoch Env Res Risk Assess 23(1):41–55
Mishra AK, Sivakumar B, Singh VP (2015) Drought processes, modeling, and mitigation. J Hydrol 526:1–2
Mishra SK, Amrit K, Pandey RP (2019) Correlation between Tennant method and standardized precipitation index for predicting environmental flow condition using rainfall in Godavari Basin. Paddy Water Environ, 17(3):515–521
Mondal A, Khare D, Kundu S, Meena PK, Mishra PK, Shukla R (2015) Impact of climate change on future soil erosion in different slope, land use, and soil-type conditions in a part of the Narmada River Basin India. J Hydrol Eng 20(6):C5014003
Montaseri M, Amirataee B (2017) Comprehensive stochastic assessment of meteorological drought indices. Int J Climatol 37(2):998–1013
Mukherjee S, Mishra A, Trenberth KE (2018) Climate change and drought: a perspective on drought indices. Curr Climate Change Rep 4(2):145–163
Nitzche MH, Silva BB, Martinez AS (1985) Indicativo de ano Seco e Chuvoso. Proceedings, Sociedade Brasileira de Agrometeorologia. Londrina-PR, Brazil, 307–314
Pandey BK, Khare D (2017) Analyzing and modeling of a large river basin dynamics applying integrated cellular automata and Markov model. Environ Earth Sci 76(22):1–12
Pandey BK, Khare D (2018) Identification of trend in long term precipitation and reference evapotranspiration over Narmada river basin (India). Global Planet Change 161:172–182
Pandey RP, Pandey A, Galkate RV, Byun HR, Mal BC (2010) Integrating hydro-meteorological and physiographic factors for assessment of vulnerability to drought. Water Resour Manage 24(15):4199–4217
Pandey BK, Khare D, Kawasaki A, Mishra PK (2019) Climate change impact assessment on blue and green water by coupling of representative CMIP5 climate models with physical based hydrological model. Water Resour Manage 33(1):141–158
Qutbudin I, Shiru MS, Sharafati A, Ahmed K, Al-Ansari N, Yaseen ZM, Shahid S, Wang X (2019) Seasonal drought pattern changes due to climate variability: case study in Afghanistan. Water 11(5):1096
Rickards N, Thomas T, Kaelin A, Houghton-Carr H, Jain SK, Mishra PK, Nema MK, Dixon H, Rahman MM, Horan R, Jenkins A (2020) Understanding future water challenges in a highly regulated Indian river basin—modelling the impact of climate change on the hydrology of the Upper Narmada. Water 12(6):1762
Rossi G, Benedini M, Tsakiris G, Giakoumakis S (1992) On regional drought estimation and analysis. Water Resour Manage 6(4):249–277
Roxy MK, Ghosh S, Pathak A, Athulya R, Mujumdar M, Murtugudde R, Terray P, Rajeevan M (2017) A threefold rise in widespread extreme rain events over central India. Nat Commun 8(1):1–11
Sabău NC, Man TE, Armaş A, Balaj C, Giru M (2015) Characterization of agricultural droughts using standardized precipitation index (SPI) and bhalme-mooley drought index (BMDI). Environ Eng Manag J 14(6):1441–1454
Saravi MM, Safdari AA, Malekian A (2009) Intensity–Duration–Frequency and spatial analysis of droughts using the Standardized Precipitation Index. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci Discuss 6(2):1347–1383
Sayari N, Bannayan M, Alizadeh A, Farid A (2013) Using drought indices to assess climate change impacts on drought conditions in the northeast of Iran (case study: Kashafrood basin). Meteorol Appl 20(1):115–127
Sheffield J, Wood EF (2008) Global trends and variability in soil moisture and drought characteristics, 1950–2000, from observation-driven simulations of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle. J Clim 21(3):432–458
Singh D, Ghosh S, Roxy MK, McDermid S (2019) Indian summer monsoon: Extreme events, historical changes, and role of anthropogenic forcings. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Climate Change 10(2):e571
Suryavanshi S, Pandey A, Chaube UC, Joshi N (2014) Long-term historic changes in climatic variables of Betwa Basin India. Theor Appl Climatol 117(3–4):403–418
Swain S, Patel P, Nandi S (2017) Application of SPI, EDI and PNPI using MSWEP precipitation data over Marathwada, India. In: 2017 IEEE International geoscience and remote sensing symposium (IGARSS), 5505–5507. IEEE
Swain S, Mishra SK, Pandey A (2020) Assessment of meteorological droughts over Hoshangabad district, India. In: IOP Conference Series Earth and Environmental Science, 491, 012012. IOP Publishing
Tabari H, Willems P (2018) More prolonged droughts by the end of the century in the Middle East. Environ Res Lett 13(10):104005
Thom HC (1958) A note on the gamma distribution. Mon Weather Rev 86(4):117–122
Thomas T, Gunthe SS, Ghosh NC, Sudheer KP (2015a) Analysis of monsoon rainfall variability over Narmada basin in central India: implication of climate change. J Water Climate Change 6(3):615–627
Thomas T, Nayak PC, Ghosh NC (2015b) Spatiotemporal analysis of drought characteristics in the Bundelkhand region of central india using the standardized precipitation index. J Hydrol Eng 20(11):05015004
Tigkas D, Vangelis H, Tsakiris G (2012) Drought and climatic change impact on streamflow in small watersheds. Sci Total Environ 440:33–41
Tiwari H, Pandey BK (2019) Non-parametric characterization of long-term rainfall time series. Meteorol Atmos Phys 131(3):627–637
Tosunoglu F, Kisi O (2017) Trend analysis of maximum hydrologic drought variables using Mann-Kendall and Şen’s innovative trend method. River Res Appl 33(4):597–610
Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2004) Towards a drought watch system based on spatial SPI. Water Resour Manage 18(1):1–12
Tsakiris G, Nalbantis I, Vangelis H, Verbeiren B, Huysmans M, Tychon B, Jacquemin I, Canters F, Vanderhaegen S, Engelen G, Poelmans L (2013) A system-based paradigm of drought analysis for operational management. Water Resour Manage 27(15):5281–5297
Udmale P, Ichikawa Y, Manandhar S, Ishidaira H, Kiem AS (2014) Farmers׳ perception of drought impacts, local adaptation and administrative mitigation measures in Maharashtra State, India. Int J Disast Risk Reduct 10:250–269
van Rooy MP (1965) A Rainfall anomaly index (RAI) independent of time and space. Notos 14:43–48
Vu MT, Raghavan SV, Pham DM, Liong SY (2015) Investigating drought over the central highland, Vietnam, using regional climate models. J Hydrol 526:265–273
Wilhite DA, Glantz MH (1985) Understanding: the drought phenomenon: the role of definitions. Water Int 10(3):111–120
Wilhite DA, Svoboda MD, Hayes MJ (2007) Understanding the complex impacts of drought: a key to enhancing drought mitigation and preparedness. Water Resour Manage 21(5):763–774
Wilhite DA, Sivakumar MV, Pulwarty R (2014) Managing drought risk in a changing climate: the role of national drought policy. Weather Clim Extr 3:4–13
Wu H, Svoboda MD, Hayes MJ, Wilhite DA, Wen F (2007) Appropriate application of the standardized precipitation index in arid locations and dry seasons. Int J Climatol 27(1):65–79
Wu H, Soh LK, Samal A, Chen XH (2008) Trend analysis of streamflow drought events in Nebraska. Water Resour Manage 22(2):145–164
Wu J, Qian H, Li P, Song Y (2014) A system-theory-based model for monthly river runoff forecasting: model calibration and optimization. J Hydrol Hydromech 62(1):82–88
Yuan Z, Yan DH, Yang ZY, Yin J, Yuan Y (2015) Temporal and spatial variability of drought in Huang-huai-hai river basin. China Theoret Appl Climatol 122(3–4):755–769
Funding
Not applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This article is a part of the Topical Collection in Environmental Earth Sciences on “Water in Large Basins” guest edited by Peiyue Li and Jianhua Wu.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Swain, S., Mishra, S.K. & Pandey, A. A detailed assessment of meteorological drought characteristics using simplified rainfall index over Narmada River Basin, India. Environ Earth Sci 80, 221 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-021-09523-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-021-09523-8