Meteorological drought mitigation for combating climate change: a case study of southern Sindh, Pakistan

Abstract

A meteorological drought study is performed using monthly time scale data from three separate locations in southern Sindh, Pakistan. Rainfall and temperature have been used to identify the drought. These data were transformed into drought indices known as the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and standardized precipitation index (SPI), which were derived using (the Hargreaves equation). In this study, two indices are compared for three separate meteorological stations Chhor, Mithi, and Badin where most socioeconomic livelihoods depend heavily on water. The SPEI is produced through a simple water balance combining precipitation and temperature, in distinction to the SPI, it just considers precipitation. In conclusion, our study showed that both indices were capable of detecting droughts that fluctuated in time across the reference period of 2004–2021. SPI and SPEI's direction of change was similar, however the impact on the drought condition varied. SPEI discovered more droughts with longer durations and greater with 13 moderate droughts at SPEI-3 for Chhor and Badin Station while Mithi indicated 8 moderate droughts during 2004-2021 and SPI-3 indicated 4 moderates for Chhor, Mithi and Badin indicated 6 moderate drought. Conversely, SPEI discovered more moderate-level droughts than SPI, however they were of shorter length and less frequent occurrence than the severe to moderate droughts. The findings imply that drought characteristics are significantly influenced by temperature variability.