Can multiscalar meteorological drought indices detect soil moisture droughts? A study of Indian regions

The present study aims to explore the potential of multiscalar meteorological drought indices in detecting soil moisture drought events. The standardized soil moisture index (SSMI), standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized evapotranspiration index (SEI), standardized precipitation evapot...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hydrological sciences journal 2021-07, Vol.66 (9), p.1475-1487
Main Authors: Das, Prabir Kumar, Mohinuddin, S. K., Midya, Subrata Kumar, Das, Dilip Kumar, Sharma, Richa, Bandyopadhyay, Soumya
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
combined drought
Correlation
Drought
Drought index
Evapotranspiration
Evapotranspiration-precipitation relationships
Failure rates
False alarms
Information retrieval
MERRA-2
meteorological drought
Meteorological parameters
Moisture index
multivariate moisture anomaly index
Precipitation
Soil
Soil moisture
soil moisture drought
Standardized precipitation index
standardized soil moisture index
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Summary:The present study aims to explore the potential of multiscalar meteorological drought indices in detecting soil moisture drought events. The standardized soil moisture index (SSMI), standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized evapotranspiration index (SEI), standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and multivariate moisture anomaly index (MMAI) were computed using long-term (1980-2015) MERRA-2 soil moisture, precipitation and/or evapotranspiration data products. The performances of the meteorological indices were evaluated based on a zone-wise and spatial correlation approach along with failure rate (FR) and false alarm rate (FAR) values. The spatial correlation was highest in SEI, followed by MMAI, in comparison to SPI and SPEI. FR and FAR values indicated that SEI is the best index for detecting soil moisture drought events, whereas MMAI outperformed the other indices in representing combined drought events, i.e. meteorological or/and soil moisture droughts. The outcome of the study may be useful in retrieving information about soil moisture drought over a region using only meteorological parameters.
ISSN:0262-6667
2150-3435
DOI:10.1080/02626667.2021.1942475