Drought Analysis in East Nusa Tenggara (Indonesia) Using Regional Frequency Analysis

Abstract

Drought is a condition of a shortage of water that has an impact on economic activity. This research studies the severe drought area in Indonesia using Regional Frequency Analysis (RFA), based on daily precipitation data recorded at nine stations. The analysis reveals five homogeneous regions, based on discordancy and heterogeneity tests. Furthermore, the L-moment approach is applied to investigate the regional distribution and suggests that the Pearson type III distribution is the distribution that best fits the five regions. This distribution is also used to calculate the regional growth curve that is employed in the drought analysis. The drought return period analysis, for conditions of 40% of normal rainfall, concludes that the region containing the Fransiskus Xaverius, Gewayantana, and Mali stations has the highest drought risk, indicated by the fastest return period estimate of 2 years and 4 months. Moreover, the extreme drought analysis shows that two of the regions have the potential to experience the return of extreme drought, with less than 20% of normal rainfall, in less than four years.