How useful are CORDEX products for the assessment of future agricultural drought propensity across the Indian subcontinent?
- 1Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, Department of Civil Engineering, India (prabal.nitk@gmail.com, prabal.18dr0094@cve.iitism.ac.in )
- 2Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, Department of Civil Engineering, India (kironmala.iitkgp@gmail.com , kironmala@iitism.ac.in)
- 3Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Department of Civil Engineering, India (rajib@civil.iitkgp.ac.in, rajibmaity@gmail.com)
Abstract
This study aims to evaluate the future evolution of agricultural drought propensity across the Indian subcontinent through Drought Management Index (DMI), a probabilistic measure based on the concept of Reliability-Resilience-Vulnerability (RRV) of soil moisture series at a location/region (Chanda et al., 2014; Chanda and Maity, 2017). In this study, monthly gridded soil moisture products from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) framework are used after suitable bias correction, if needed. In the realm of RRV analysis, the fall of soil moisture below a threshold (e.g., Permanent Wilting Point, PWP) is considered as the ‘failure state’. The joint distribution of resilience (the ability of the soil moisture system to recover from a failure state) and vulnerability (severity of the deficit in soil moisture during a failure state) of soil moisture series is modelled through copulas (Nelsen, 2006; Maity, 2018) to develop the DMI. The results of this study help to assess the evolution of agricultural drought propensity, in terms of DMI, in the near (2011-2040), intermediate (2041-2070) and far future (2071-2099). The findings from multiple emission pathways, designated as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), are compared against each other during the future period and also against the historical period. As an outcome of the study, specific regions across the Indian mainland are identified that need immediate attention for managing sustainable agricultural and allied activities in future.
Keywords: Drought Management Index (DMI), soil moisture, future drought propensity, Reliability-Resilience-Vulnerability (RRV), CORDEX
References
Chanda, K., Maity, R., Sharma, A., and Mehrotra, R. (2014). Spatiotemporal variation of long-term drought propensity through reliability-resilience-vulnerability based Drought Management Index, Water Resources Research, 50(10), 7662-7676.
Chanda, K., and Maity, R. (2017). Assessment of Trend in Global Drought Propensity in the Twenty-First Century Using Drought Management Index, Water Resources Management, 31(4), 1209-1225.
Maity, R. (2018). Statistical Methods in Hydrology and Hydroclimatology. Springer.
Nelsen, R. B. (2007). An introduction to copulas. Springer Science & Business Media.
How to cite: Das, P., Chanda, K., and Maity, R.: How useful are CORDEX products for the assessment of future agricultural drought propensity across the Indian subcontinent?, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-15885, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-15885, 2020.
