Comparative study of meteorological and hydrological drought characteristics in the Pekalen River basin, East Java, Indonesia

Abstract

Drought is known as a normal part of climate and including in a slow-onset natural hazard which may have several impacts on hydrology, agriculture, and socioeconomic. Drought monitoring, including its severity, spatial and duration is required and becomes an essential input for establishing drought risk management and mitigation plan. Many drought indices have been introduced and applied in regions with different climate characteristics in the last decades. This paper aims to compare standardized precipitation index (SPI) and rainfall anomaly index (RAI) along with standardized streamflow index (SSI) in Pekalen River Basin, East Java, Indonesia. The statistical association analyses, included the Pearson correlation (r), Kendal tau (τ), and Spearman rho (rs) were performed to examine the degree of consistency between monthly and annual drought index of SPI and RAI. Additionally, the comparative analysis was performed by overlapping both monthly and annual drought index from the SPI and RAI with the SSI at hydrological years. The study revealed that the characteristic of the annual drought index between the SPI and RAI exhibits pattern similarity which indicated by the high correlation coefficient between them. Further, the comparative analysis on each hydrological year showed that the SPI and RAI were very well correlated and exhibited a similar pattern with the SSI. Overall, the SPI shows better performance than the RAI for estimating drought characteristic either monthly or annual basis. Hence, the SPI is considered as a reliable and effective tool for analyzing drought characteristic in the study area.