Abstract:
Drought is known as one of the most devastating climate extremes which the world is
facing around the years. The present study is conducted over the Potohar Plateau of
Pakistan as it is quite dependent upon rainfall and deficiency of seasonal rainfall is one
the major reason of drought in the region. The observational as well as monthly gridded
data sets of Global Precipitation Climatological Centre (GPCC) and Climate Research
Unit (CRU) of precipitation and temperature have been used to determine the
meteorological drought both seasonal (winter and summer) and annual basis during 1951
to 2019. In order to determine the consensus of drought years, five different drought
indices i.e., Standardized precipitation Index (SPI), Reconnaissance Drought Index
(RDI), Deciles Index (DI) and two relatively new drought indices (aSPI and eRDI) based
on effective rainfall by using United State Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) have been
calculated. These drought indices identified six seasonal drought years (2000, 2001,
2002, 2005, 2009 and 2011), whereas the entire five indices showed a consensus that
1974 and 2009 were the most severe drought years over the region. In order to identify
the impact of meteorological seasonal drought over agriculture, the Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was analyzed spatially in each of the drought years
where above 50% of the total area was under agriculture drought during summer (2002
and 2009) and it was above 65% during winter (2001 and 2002) over Potohar Plateau.
This study provides an overview for the drought managers and disasters agencies to
develop contingency plan of climate smart agriculture towards sustainable development
over the region.
