Abstract
AbstractThe study focused on the Godavari River basin to understand the alteration in the drought phenomenon for future scenarios. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)-3 is calculated from Climate Research Unit 4.03 precipitation, and minimum and maximum temperatures. The drought magnitude and characteristics are determined using SPEI, which considers both precipitation and temperature data as input variables. The Mann–Kendall trend analysis is performed to identify the trend associated with drought characteristics. The basin is divided into six homogeneous regions using K-means clustering algorithm. The reliability ensemble averaging method is used for ensemble averaging of regional climate models (RCMs). The drought frequency analysis is carried out using trivariate copula for reference and future time periods. Variations in the drought characteristics are observed in the future scenarios with respect to the reference period. The drought duration, severity and peak for different climate divisions showed an increasing trend in future time period, especially in the case of RCP8.5 scenarios. The return periods of future droughts based on weighted-average RCMs under the two scenarios showed the possibility of more frequent droughts in the future (2053–2099) than in the past (1971–2017).
Highlights
Drought is defined as the water deficit phenomenon for a prolonged time period, which can continue for several days, months and years, affecting the water resources, agriculture, environment and human lives
The ensemble model for the RCP8.5 scenario shows a satisfactory performance for the precipitation series, heavy uncertainty is exhibited by the series under RCP8.5 scenarios in the Godavari River basin (GRB)
The reliability ensemble averaging (REA) approach provides a remedy to this problem by accounting for the uncertainty caused by regional climate models (RCMs)
Summary
Drought is defined as the water deficit phenomenon for a prolonged time period, which can continue for several days, months and years, affecting the water resources, agriculture, environment and human lives. There are no particular definitions of drought, they can be well defined with several perspectives, like conceptual or operational droughts (Wilhite & Glantz 1985) It is defined based on drought regimes, namely meteorological, agricultural and hydrological drought events depending on the deficit of rainfall, lack of soil moisture and the scarcity of water in reservoirs, lakes and river streams, respectively (Mishra & Singh 2010). Another type of drought, namely socioeconomic drought is caused by a shortage of water mostly affecting the supply and demand of water for the people. Operational drought regimes can be defined as the identification of the onset, withdrawal, duration and severity of drought events
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