Analysis of Potential Extreme Drought using Integrated Statistical Model

Abstract

Frequent extreme drought especially in urban area is majorly connected with the changes of the global climate and drastic releases of greenhouse emissions in the earth system. It becomes significant in identifying how frequent the potential drought event in the long term and how big its impact to the existence water sources. Due to this concern, the integrated statistical model has been used to estimate the potential extreme drought in Pahang state, Malaysia. The Representative Concentration Pathways in three radiation levels known as RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 provided by IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) were implemented to produce the plausible future weather scenarios in the different radiation levels. The results revealed the climate changes could alter the seasonal trend and intensity with small rises in average 7%/year (rainfall) and 0.2 °C/decade (temperature). Although the rainfall was expecting to increase however almost 42% of Pahang state is expected to receive lower rainfall intensity than the historical annual rainfall. Estimated the drought events potentially to occur in 20 % from upcoming 80 years with every station has high probability to drought at least twice times. For the RCPs performances, the RCP4.5 potentially to produce more frequent drought compared to other RCPs.