Modelling of meteorological drought in the foothills of Central Himalayas: A case study in Uttarakhand State, India

In the present study, Meteorological Drought (MD) has been analyzed using India Meteorological Department (IMD) criteria, and Standardized Precipitation Index (PIStandard) in the foothills of central Himalayan region of Uttarakhand State, India. Rainfall time series at two weather stations, namely Pantnagar and Dehradun stations were selected. For the evaluation of PIStandard method, the moving sums of rainfall data were arranged in monthly time series at the time scales of 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months. The rainfall data were analyzed after sequencing it in a time series for testing the different statistical distributions including the Gamma distribution, Normal and Log-Normal distribution. As a result, the Gamma distribution was found most suitable for fitting based on Kolmogorov-Smirnov test at 5% level of significance. Since PIStandard applies the running sum of the rainfall values at different time scales of 1- 24 months and more number of variables were used for statistical distributions. The short-term drought monitoring in month of PIStandard-1 and PIStandard-3 was done whereas, for the long-term drought monitoring PIStandard-12 and PIStandard-24 was used for management of water resources. This approach gave better valuation and monitoring of the meteorological drought. The finding is helpful to manage water including rainwater harvesting and water storage structure, irrigation scheduling and yielding the crop. Further, PIStandard were used to predict the drought and submergence conditionsin both stations as a ready reference at 3 or 12 month time scales. The information derived from investigation might be appropriate used for the rainwater harvesting along with proper planning and management of crop planning and water resource storage structure in the area of rainfed and/or drought categories affected by region under the study. (c) 2021 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.

Automated summary

In this study, Meteorological Drought (MD) was analyzed in the central Himalayan region of Uttarakhand State, India using criteria from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Standardized Precipitation Index (PIStandard). The Gamma distribution was found to be most suitable for fitting the rainfall data, allowing for better evaluation and monitoring of meteorological drought. The study's findings provide insights for water resource management, rainwater harvesting, irrigation scheduling, and crop yield in the region.