A drought monitoring tool for South Asia
Drought is one of the most extreme climatic events in South Asia (SA) and has affected 1.44 billion people in last 68 years. The agriculture in many areas of this region is highly dependent on rainfall, which increases the vulnerability to drought. To mitigate the impact of drought on agriculture an...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2021-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf525 |
| _version_ | 1797747742650400768 |
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| author | Toma Rani Saha Pallav K Shrestha Oldrich Rakovec Stephan Thober Luis Samaniego |
| author_facet | Toma Rani Saha Pallav K Shrestha Oldrich Rakovec Stephan Thober Luis Samaniego |
| author_sort | Toma Rani Saha |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Drought is one of the most extreme climatic events in South Asia (SA) and has affected 1.44 billion people in last 68 years. The agriculture in many areas of this region is highly dependent on rainfall, which increases the vulnerability to drought. To mitigate the impact of drought on agriculture and food security, this study aims to develop a state-of-the-art system for monitoring agricultural drought over SA at a high spatial resolution (0.25 ^∘ ) in near real-time. This study currently focuses on the rain-fed area, and the impact of irrigation is not incorporated. This open and interactive tool can assist in monitoring the near-present soil moisture conditions, as well as assessing the historical drought conditions for better management. The South Asia Drought Monitor (SADM) runs the mesoscale hydrologic model to simulate the soil moisture using observation-based meteorological forcing (at near real-time), morphological variables, and land cover data. The soil moisture index (SMI) has been calculated by estimating the percentile of the simulated soil moisture. The drought monitor displays the SMI in five classes based on severity: abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. The main functions of this open interactive system include the provisioning of up-to-date and historical drought maps, displaying long-term drought conditions and downloading soil moisture data. Comparison of the SMI with the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) shows that the SMI and SPEI depict similar temporal distribution patterns. However, the SPEI (for 4, 6, 9 and 12 months) differs in the representation of the dry conditions in 1992, 2009, and 2015 and the wet condition in 1983, 1988, and 1990. We evaluated the implications of using different precipitation forcings in a hydrological simulation. A comparison of major drought characteristics such as areal extent, duration, and intensity, using different precipitation datasets show that uncertainty in precipitation forcings can significantly influence model output and drought characteristics. For example, the areal extent of one of the most severe droughts from 1986 to 1988 differs by 9% between ERA5 and CHIRPSv2. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:55:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a5dcbccd1c52464d9a11bbef99af15aa |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:55:00Z |
| publishDate | 2021-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-a5dcbccd1c52464d9a11bbef99af15aa2023-08-09T14:58:20ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262021-01-0116505401410.1088/1748-9326/abf525A drought monitoring tool for South AsiaToma Rani Saha0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9505-804XPallav K Shrestha1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5529-7460Oldrich Rakovec2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2451-3305Stephan Thober3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3939-1523Luis Samaniego4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8449-4428Department Computational Hydrosystems, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH—UFZ , Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, GermanyDepartment Computational Hydrosystems, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH—UFZ , Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, GermanyDepartment Computational Hydrosystems, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH—UFZ , Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany; Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences , Prague, Czech RepublicDepartment Computational Hydrosystems, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH—UFZ , Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, GermanyDepartment Computational Hydrosystems, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH—UFZ , Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, GermanyDrought is one of the most extreme climatic events in South Asia (SA) and has affected 1.44 billion people in last 68 years. The agriculture in many areas of this region is highly dependent on rainfall, which increases the vulnerability to drought. To mitigate the impact of drought on agriculture and food security, this study aims to develop a state-of-the-art system for monitoring agricultural drought over SA at a high spatial resolution (0.25 ^∘ ) in near real-time. This study currently focuses on the rain-fed area, and the impact of irrigation is not incorporated. This open and interactive tool can assist in monitoring the near-present soil moisture conditions, as well as assessing the historical drought conditions for better management. The South Asia Drought Monitor (SADM) runs the mesoscale hydrologic model to simulate the soil moisture using observation-based meteorological forcing (at near real-time), morphological variables, and land cover data. The soil moisture index (SMI) has been calculated by estimating the percentile of the simulated soil moisture. The drought monitor displays the SMI in five classes based on severity: abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. The main functions of this open interactive system include the provisioning of up-to-date and historical drought maps, displaying long-term drought conditions and downloading soil moisture data. Comparison of the SMI with the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) shows that the SMI and SPEI depict similar temporal distribution patterns. However, the SPEI (for 4, 6, 9 and 12 months) differs in the representation of the dry conditions in 1992, 2009, and 2015 and the wet condition in 1983, 1988, and 1990. We evaluated the implications of using different precipitation forcings in a hydrological simulation. A comparison of major drought characteristics such as areal extent, duration, and intensity, using different precipitation datasets show that uncertainty in precipitation forcings can significantly influence model output and drought characteristics. For example, the areal extent of one of the most severe droughts from 1986 to 1988 differs by 9% between ERA5 and CHIRPSv2.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf525droughtSouth Asiadrought monitoringmHMprecipitation forcing uncertainty |
| spellingShingle | Toma Rani Saha Pallav K Shrestha Oldrich Rakovec Stephan Thober Luis Samaniego A drought monitoring tool for South Asia Environmental Research Letters drought South Asia drought monitoring mHM precipitation forcing uncertainty |
| title | A drought monitoring tool for South Asia |
| title_full | A drought monitoring tool for South Asia |
| title_fullStr | A drought monitoring tool for South Asia |
| title_full_unstemmed | A drought monitoring tool for South Asia |
| title_short | A drought monitoring tool for South Asia |
| title_sort | drought monitoring tool for south asia |
| topic | drought South Asia drought monitoring mHM precipitation forcing uncertainty |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf525 |
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