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Drought index for the region experiencing low seasonal rainfall: an application to northwestern Bangladesh

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Abstract

This research has presented a drought index, the harmonic mean of vertical and horizontal standardized precipitation indices obtained from two different cumulative rainfall distributions. The recent estimations of droughts in northwestern Bangladesh are highly inconsistent and not adequately aligned with the agricultural productions. This study has identified the reasons behind these inconsistencies. Firstly, the previous studies did not consider the effects of very low seasonal rainfall distributions, and secondly, they made improper uses of time scales in the computations of standardized precipitation index. The proposed drought index has overcome the limitations of the earlier standardized precipitation index and properly addressed the reasons, and estimated the meteorological droughts in the study area. Results show that various areas in northwestern Bangladesh were under moderate droughts in 1992, 1994, 2010, 2012, and 2016, and Dinajpur was close to severe drought in 1994. These droughts are not found to significantly impact agricultural production in the region and have not left any reasonable signatures on production losses. The findings obtained are well supportive of the agricultural production statistics. The drought index presented in this study is a more accurate way of determining droughts in regions with low seasonal rainfall and identifying problems with smooth agricultural production. Moreover, the high-frequency mild meteorological droughts have been estimated as a common feature of the study period though these mild droughts may turn to severe or extreme droughts.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and editor for their thoughtful comments and suggestions to improve this research work. The authors thank Professor Abdullah Al Mamun, Department of English, and Mr. Md. Feroz Ibne Rahman, Research Scholar, IBS, University of Rajshahi for their support in editing the final manuscript. The authors also thank Bangladesh Meteorological Department, National Water Resources Database, and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics for using their data in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geophysics Lab, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, 6205, Bangladesh

    Syed Mustafizur Rahman

  2. Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Pabna University of Science and Technology, Pabna, 6600, Bangladesh

    Md. Omar Faruk

  3. Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services, Dhaka, 1212, Bangladesh

    Md.Habibur Rahman

  4. BRAC Business School, BRAC University, 66 Mohakhali, Dhaka, 1212, Bangladesh

    Syed Mahbubur Rahman

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  1. Syed Mustafizur Rahman
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Correspondence to Md. Omar Faruk.

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Rahman, S.M., Faruk, M.O., Rahman, M. et al. Drought index for the region experiencing low seasonal rainfall: an application to northwestern Bangladesh. Arab J Geosci 15, 277 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-09524-2

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