Meteorological drought assessment using standardized precipitation index for different agro-climatic zones of Odisha

In this paper standardized precipitation index (SPI) is used to assess meteorological drought for all 30 districts covering 10 agro-climatic zones in an eastern Indian state, Odisha. Monthly rainfall data of 115 years (1901-2015) for all 30 districts of Odisha are analyzed using SPI on 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12-month timescale. These timescales reflect the impact of drought on the availability of different water resources. Results indicate that in all the agro-climatic zones of Odisha, mild drought events have the highest frequencies of occurrence followed by moderate drought events for different timescales. Severe and extreme drought frequencies are comparatively lesser than mild and moderate drought frequencies. SPI analysis shows that 32-46 years are affected by mild drought, 4-16 years affected by moderate drought, 1-9 years are affected by severe drought and 1-5 years are affected by extreme drought during study period of 115 years in different agro-climatic zones of Odisha. It is observed 50.3% areas in the state are affected by drought in June out of which chances of occurrence of mild drought is maximum (28.7%). In the months of July, August and September, 51.7, 48.5 and 46.1% areas are affected by droughts. On average 49.15% areas of the entire state is affected by drought of various intensities out of which the share of mild, moderate, severe and extreme drought is 28.38, 13.28, 5.06 and 2.43%, respectively.