This document discusses the development of an experimental drought monitor for India that operates at 25km resolution with a 1-day lag. It uses bias-corrected precipitation data from TRMM and temperature data from GEFS as inputs to the VIC land surface model to calculate soil moisture, runoff, and drought indices like SPI, SSI, and SRI. The drought monitor has been validated against remotely sensed drought indices and shows potential to be improved with higher resolution precipitation data and short-term precipitation forecasting to allow for drought forecasting.

1. Drought Monitoring and
Prediction in India
Vimal Mishra, Assistant Professor
IIT Gandhinagar
vmishra@iitgn.ac.in

2. Drought: often among forgotten
disasters
Rajasthan in India, which has suffered five
consecutive years of drought (The Hindustan
times, 24th May, 2003).
Of the 608 million people affected by disasters in
2002, 300 million were hit by drought in India.
Source: BBC

3. Introduction
Crops in India Wilt in a Weak Monsoon Season (Drought , 2012)
Source: NY Times
http://kmhouseindia.blogspot.com

4. Drought and Food Related
Challenges
Alarming food security threat in India ……..
Source: International Food Policy Research Institute

5. Drought and Water Related
Challenges
Increasing water stress and depleting groundwater resources……..
Vorosmorty et al. 2008
Rodell et al., 2009

6. Problem statement:
Necessity of Real Time Drought
Monitoring • Rapid groundwater depletion (4 cm/year)
between 2002 to 2008
• Low irrigation efficiency and high
groundwater extraction
• Higher dependency on precipitation and soil
moisture
• Real-time information on droughts may help
in planning and decision making
• Our country lacks a high resolution real-time
drought monitor
http://sac.csic.es/spei/map/maps.html
http://www.imd.gov.in/section/hydro/dyna
mic/seasonal-rainfall.htm
Global Drought Early Warning System (Pozzi et al. 2013)

7. Approach
Precipitation data from Tropical Rainfall Measuring
Mission (TRMM), NASA
0.25 degree, daily satellite based TRMM 3B42RTv7 product is used.
Temperature data from Global Ensemble Forecast System
Analysis (GEFS)
1 degree, daily, control condition, from GEFS is used.
1 degree temperature is regridded to 0.25 degree using
Maurer et al. 2002
Both real-time precipitation and temperature are bias-corrected
With respect to climatology from IMD
Land Surface Model- The VIC model
Macro-scale hydrologic model
Sub-grid variability in land, vegetation,
soil moisture, etc. can be defined statistically
Water balance mode is used

8. Experimental Drought Monitor
Operates at 25 km
resolution at 1-day lag
https://sites.google.com/a/iitgn.ac.in/india_drought_monitor/home
Bias-corrected
TRMM
Bias-corrected
GEFS
The VIC Model
Soil
Moisture
Runoff
SPI SSI SRI
Drought Monitor
Fig: Flow-chart of drought monitor

9. Validation
Agricultural drought is
well comparable to
remotely sensed
Drought Severity Index
(Mu et al., 2013)
Fig: Comparison of drought
indices from the Experimental
Drought Monitor against the
satellite based drought index
(DSI) for the monsoon season
drought in 2002
SPI
SRI
SSI
DSI
Shah and Mishra (2014)

10. Validation
Monthly Scale
Development
of a robust
drought index
using
precipitation,
soil moisture,
and NDVI
SPI+SSI+NDVI= new drought index
Shah and Mishra (in preparation)

11. Validation
Weekly Scale
Development
of a robust
drought index
using
precipitation,
soil moisture,
and NDVI
SPI+SSI+NDVI= new drought index
Shah and Mishra (in preparation)

12. Agricultural Drought- District level
Fig: 1-month Standardized Soil
Moisture Index on 24th September,
2014 in North-Central India
Fig: Divisions of India, for
viewing drought at district level
Drought monitoring can be
further improved using high
resolution rainfall data

13. Precipitation Monitoring and
Forecast
Short-term precipitation forecast
can help in multiple ways
Severe flooding in Jammu and
Kashmir due to heavy rain on 4th
September
Data source is TRMM

14. Short-term Forecast

15. Short-term precipitation forecast for
HudHud
Forecast Date: 9th October 2014

16. Short-term precipitation forecast for
HudHud
Forecast Date: 11th October 2014

17. Drought
Forecasting
Precipitation and
Temperature forecast
from NCEP Global
Ensemble Forecast
System
Forced in LSM
Fig: 7-day lead forecast of drought
based on Soil Moisture Percentiles
and Runoff Percentiles
Shah and Mishra (in review)

18. Related publications
1. Shah, Reepal and Vimal Mishra (2014b). Development of an
Experimental Near-real Drought Monitor for India. Journal of
Hydrometeorology (preprint).
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JHM-D-14-0041.1
2. Mishra, Vimal, Reepal, Shah, and Bridget,Thrasher, (2014) Soil
Moisture Droughts under the Retrospective and Projected Climate
in India. Journal of Hydrometeorology, AMS
(preprint). http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-13-0177.1
3. Shah, Reepal, and Vimal Mishra, 2014a: Evaluation of the
Reanalysis Products for the Monsoon Season Droughts in India. J.
Hydrometeor, 15, 1575–1591. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-13-0103.1

19. Thank you
Acknowledgements
Funding agency: Medialab Asia, Department of
Information Technology
Measurement to Management (M2M): Improved
water use efficiency and agricultural productivity
through experimental sensor network
For more information please visit:
https://sites.google.com/a/iitgn.ac.in/india_droug
ht_monitor/