Seasonal hydrological drought indicator for tropical drought identification

Abstract

Drought’s frequency, duration and severity are essentials for impact control and mitigation of droughts. This paper adopts 3-month seasonal scale Streamflow Drought Index (SDI-3) to analyze these drought characteristics for the tropical climate at the Central, Southern and East Coast regions of Peninsular Malaysia in 1997-2016. The identified drought events were then evaluated using four major historical events from five different locations. The results showed that SDI-3 identified the occurrences of all reported drought events but with deviated onset and duration. However, the SDI-3 was concluded to be suitable for hydrological drought monitoring with reasons of increased temperature, groundwater and forest replenishment, and human factors. The spatial analysis on the drought characteristics also showed that most of the areas are more prone to short-term droughts, with relatively higher severity at north part of the Central Region, north-west part of the Southern Region and central part of the East Coast.