Impact of Climate Change on Meteorological Drought in Different Climate Zones Across the Indian Sub-Continent

Abstract:

During the last decades, the world is experiencing the adverse effect of climate change like heat waves, flash floods, insect outbreaks, and droughts, affecting countries world-wide and compromising food security. The proposed model framework would allow predictions utilizing available climatic (precipitation, temperature) data to estimate the change induced by climate change for catchments without hydrological measurements. We used the concept of comparative hydrology to develop generalized predictions on catchment-scale within similar climatic zones for the Indian sub-continent. In this study, we focused on the impact of climate change on drought. We studied the impact of changes in precipitation and temperature on the dynamics of drought indices like PDSI and SPEI across various climate zones in the Indian sub-continent.

A dataset of 215 catchments and their physio-climatic characteristics consisting of their climatic, hydrologic, vegetation, and soil properties were developed. The catchments were classified into climate classes (Humid, Arid, Semi-arid, and Dry) based on Aridity Index. The vulnerability of the catchment to drought with the change in climate using 50 years of data is assessed using data-mining algorithms. This study will help in understanding the vulnerability to drought of catchments under varying climatic conditions and will help stakeholders mitigating the adverse effects of climate change.