Assessment of Drought Trend and Variability over Ganga River Basin

The water crisis and drought are among the main problems that the human beings are facing in the recent years. The present study presents an analysis of trends in different drought variables over Ganga river basin for the period of 19802020. Three types of drought indices viz. standardized precipitation index (SPI), streamflow drought index (SDI) and evaporative stress index have been used for the assessment of drought events. Four different periods of 3, 6, 9, and 12 months were investigated in this study of the selected basin. Based on drought indices, probability of drought occurance has been estimated for the basin. Further, trend in drought indices was assessed using the modified Mann-Kendall (MK) test and Sens slope estimator. Relativee changes in percentage have been computed for the period using the slope of the trend. From this study, it is observed that frequency of drought events is increasing over the last four decades.