Reconnaissance of meteorological drought by using Standardized Precipitation Index and India Meteorological Department criteria for five districts of south Gujarat Kumar Neeraj*, Chandrawanshi S.K., Radadia G.G. Agricultural Meteorological Cell, Department of Agriculutral Engineering, N.M. College of Agriculture, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari-396 450, Gujarat *E-mail: neeraj34012@gmail.com
Online published on 15 March, 2019. Abstract Assessment of drought is one of the most important steps in risk management of drought. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) can be used for indicating the associated temporal and spatial variations of rainfall. The aim of this research is the assessment of the characteristics such as intensity, frequency and duration of meteorological drought using SPI with 12 months time scales in south Gujarat. On the basis of SPI more wet events were found in Valsad district, followed by Surat and Navsari. Similarly more dry events were observed in Navsari district followed by Bharuch and Dangs districts. SPI values of the high rainfall district showed slightly better stretching in both positive and negative directions, compared to that of the low rainfall district. The trend analysis shows increasing trend of SPI for Navsari district and decreasing trend of SPI for Dangs, Valsad, Surat and Bharuch districts. On the basis of IMD criteria, the frequency of occurrence of drought at Navsari and Bharuch districts is higher as compared to Dangs, Valsad and Surat districts. Similarly, the frequency of occurrence of excess rainfall at Dangs and Surat districts is higher as compared to Navsari, Valsad and Bharuch districts. Drought anomaly was found that frequency of mild drought occurrence was quite high and occurred at regular interval at all the locations. Top Keywords Drought, Excess and deficit rainfall, IMD classification, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). Top |