www.IndianJournals.com Members Copy, Not for Commercial Sale Downloaded From IP - 210.212.141.158 on dated 29-Jan-2011 Hydrology Journal, 30 (1-2) March-June2007 Characterization of meteorological drought K.N. TIWARI Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India D.K. PAUL IWM, ICAR, New Delhi, India N.K. GONTIA CAET, Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh, Gujarat, India ABSTRACT: Methodology to characterize meteorological drought and drought frequency curves have been developed for the drought prone Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand, India. The annual and monsoon seasonal rainfall data for a period of 80 years (1913 – 1992) were analyzed to determine excess and deficit from normal. The annual and seasonal rainfall follows log normal and normal distribution respectively. Meteorological drought is investigated by various methods and using proposed methodology. Based on seasonal rainfall of 80 years the proposed methodology classified 45 years (56.25%) as drought years out of which incipient, large, severe, disastrous and extreme drought years were 12 (15.55%), 21(27.77%), 8 (10%), 3 (3.75%) and 1(1.25%) respectively. Drought indices were also developed and year 1966 was classified as the extreme drought year of the area. Multiyear drought characteristic reveals that as drought duration increased from 2 to 6 years the mean severity increased with increasing variability, though the mean drought intensity also increased gradually, but with decreasing variability. Key words: Meteorological drought, drought characterization, drought indices, incipient drought, disastrous drought and extreme drought. INTRODUCTION Rainfall is the major contributor of the precipitation in Indian tropical region and the spatial and temporal uneven distribution of rainfall leads to occurrence of flood and drought in different regions simultaneously. In India the natural hazards such as drought adversely affects the water availability for domestic, agricultural and industrial uses and creates havocs and people resorted to nomadic life styles to cope with the shortage of water. Drought is one of the several natural calamities, which build up slowly; unlike flood, no systematic methods have yet been developed either for their complete understanding or for their prediction (Salas, 1986). Thornthwaite (1948) classified drought in three types: (1) the permanent droughts of the driest climates, like in arid region, (2) the seasonal droughts in climates having well defined wet and dry seasons generally in tropical areas, and (3) the contingent droughts resulting from irregular and variable occurrence of