Monitoring drought status using precipitation factor: a case study of Jaisalmer Meteorological Station in Raja-sthan, India
Abstract: Drought is a climatic phenomenon induced by a deficiency in moisture due to the decrease in precipitation amount over of a region for a given time period. Thus for evaluating drought, long-time data series are necessary. In the present study on the basis of precipitation amounts registered at Jaisalmer station in Rajasthan state India, meteorological drought indices such as the Standard Index of Annual Precipi-tation (SIAP), Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Precipi-tation Anomaly Index (RAI) and Deciles Index (DI) have been computed in order to monitor the drought status. Then Kol-mogorov-Smirnova and Shapiro-Wilk tests were applied to examine the normality of raw data. Sequential Mann–Kendall test (SQ-MK test) was applied for determining trends. The results show no statistically significant trend, but there were points of negative mutation in annual precipitation. Drought monitoring, based on the four mentioned indices, indicate SIAP index as the most appropriate for the study area as its coefficient of correlation is close to 1.