Meteorological Drought Assessment for Jhelum River Basin, Jammu and Kashmir\'s Sangam and Ram Munshi Bagh Stations

Abstract

Abstract: Drought is a severe natural calamity that harms the global ecology. To examine drought conditions including intensity and duration, a variety of drought indicators (DIs) are commonly employed. This study assesses the occurrences of drought in Kashmir's Jhelum River Basin (JRB) at the Sangam and Ram Munshi Bagh stations. Several DI approaches, such as Deciles, Percent of Normal (PN), and Standardized Precipitation Index (Normal-, Log-, and Gamma-SPI), are used to analyse 20 years of monthly recorded precipitation data from 2002 to 2023. Every technique is used on the annual long-term precipitation data set. The findings indicate that nearly identical outcomes are obtained for the stations by the DI approaches. While the normalSPI indicates rainy and less droughty conditions, the log-SPI and gamma-SPI forecast moderate dry conditions. The results emphasize that the PN method predicts more moderate drought years in comparison with SPI method, however, Deciles method shows longer period of extreme and severe drought than other methods. As a result, the five methods indicate various drought intensities in 2017, 2018,2001, and 2002 with a peak moderate drought in 2017 in the Sangam station. The Ram Munshi Bagh station area experienced the less drought conditions from 2002 to 2023 with a moderate drought in 2017 and 2018 as well. Therefore, moderate drought conditions happened in 2017 -2018 in both stations confirm to the recorded drought reports for the same region.