Abstract:
Due to alteration in distribution and intensity of rainfall caused by climate change, the problem of floods and droughts is likely to increase in future. Drought will have a negative impact on food production and drinking water availability in India. Keeping this in mind, an attempt has been made to study the drought situation in India in the presented paper under climate change scenarios of future years. An index named Standard Potential Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), was utilized on a spatial scale of 0.25° using future climate forecasts projected by Global Climate Models (GCMs). Based on the calculations derived from this index, drought conditions have been studied all over India. SPEI assesses drought taking into account both rainfall and temperature. Owing to globalwarming scenario wherein temperature is on rise, SPEI is more effective than other popular indices since it takes temperature into account in estimation of drought. In this study, nine GCMs have been utilized instead of relying on a single model and the intensity and type of drought have been analyzed through a multi-model ensemble time series prepared from them. Earlier the gridded rainfall and temperature data provided by the India Meteorological Department has been used to correct the biases in the projections available by GCMs through quantile mapping technique. Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope tests have been employed to study the trend in drought severity and regional spread. The presented study suggests the possibility that climate change may make drought more widespread and intense in the future across India.
