Assessing Drought Scenario over India during Monsoon 2009 – An Approach Based on Standardized Precipitation Index

Abstract

An attempt has been made in this study to assess drought scenario over India during monsoon 2009, the latest drought of India, employing Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). Monthly rainfall data, for more than hundred years, for the 36 meteorological subdivisions as well as the country as a whole have been used in the analysis. The study brought out drought scenario over the country in different time scales. SPI for June indicated a gruesome picture of drought when out of 36 only 5 sub-divisions did not suffer from any drought. Though the drought scenario improved in July yet in the subsequent months of August and September the picture became grim. SPI of (June+July), (July+August), (June+July+August) and (June+July+August+September) revealed the continued grim picture of drought during monsoon 2009. SPI, analysed for the individual sub-divisions falling in different homogeneous regions, revealed that the usually surplus sub-divisions of northeast India were worst hit by drought, whereas in the drought prone Saurashtra and Kutch in northwest India drought was minimal.