Meteorological drought analysis for Helmand River Basin, Afghanistan

Abstract

This study evaluates drought at Lashkargah, Farah, Adraskan, and Gardandiwal stations in Helmand River Basin (HRB) in Afghanistan to determine appropriate drought indices for the basin. Thirty seven years of monthly recorded precipitation data from 1979 to 2015 are employed with different drought index (DI) methods which include the Standardized Precipitation Index (Normal-SPI, Log-SPI, and Gamma-SPI), the Percent of Normal (PN), and the Deciles. All the methods are applied to the annual long term precipitation data. The log-SPI and the gamma-SPI predict extreme drought conditions, whereas, the normal-SPI determines wet and less dry conditions. The results emphasize that the PN and the Deciles methods predict more drought years in comparison to the SPI methods. The Deciles method shows longer period of extreme and severe drought than other methods. The five methods indicate various drought intensities in 1985, 1987, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 at all the stations. The extreme drought condition in 2001 at all the stations confirms to the recorded drought reports for the same region. It is noted that since the log-SPI and the gamma-SPI capture the historical extreme and severe drought periods successfully, these are recommended as the drought monitoring indices for Helmand River Basin.