Exploring Historical and Projection of Drought Periods in Cirebon Regency, Indonesia

Abstract

Climate hazards that affect drought could have an impact on agricultural production. Cirebon Regency as one of West Java's food supply areahas experienced hydrological drought because ofclimate variability. Hence, there were many rice fieldswhich lack of water sources for irrigation and resulted in crop failure. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the historical and projection of drought periods as well as the severity of droughts in Cirebon Regency, Indonesia. Interpretation of weather and climate data and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) were employed for methods of this studyby using rainfall data only. Based on baseline data (1986-2017) from Jatiwangi Meteorological Stationand Global Circulation Model (GCM) projection simulation (2020-2045) under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 scenario, the SPI analysis results show that the drought periodsare predicted to shift in the future with increasing drought severity. This study concludes that climate variability that affects future dry rainfall will still happen in uncertain month periods.Therefore, climatic information is needed in the vulnerable area to reduce the potential impactsthat will occur in the future.