Modeling drought duration and severity using two-dimensional copula

Abstract

Drought is a natural disaster that has terrible effects on society and the natural environment. However, accurate detection and measurement of incoming drought events help policymakers control their severe impact by strengthening drought mitigation policies. In this research, we have assessed the suitability of various Copula's models for modeling drought events using two drought indices, i.e., Standardized Precipitation Index and Standardized Precipitation Temperature Index for different meteorological stations of Pakistan. Outcomes associated with this research shows that Gumbel-Hougaard Copula is the most suitable for Bahawalnagar Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Islamabad, Khanpur, Lahore, Murree, Sargodha, and Sialkot stations. Additionally, we have worked on the fitting of various popular probability functions for drought duration and severity. The result indicates that the Gamma distribution is the most suitable for defining drought duration and severity in all the selected stations. Overall, this research's findings provide baseline statistics for policymakers for controlling the effects of future droughts.