Author(s): Md Munir Hayet Khan, Nur Shazwani Muhammad, Ahmed El-Shafie
Linked Author(s): Md. Munir Hayet Khan
Keywords: Meteorological, hydrological, drought indices, SPI & SDI
Abstract: Drought events have affected peninsular Malaysia several times during the last decades. Therefore, analysis of drought episodes is important for drought management operations. Drought indexing is a practical approach to assimilate large amounts of data into quantitative information which can be applied in drought forecasting, declaring drought levels, contingency planning and impact assessments. This paper analyzes the meteorological drought events for 44 years of historical rainfall data using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and hydrological drought events from 56 years of streamflow data using Streamflow Drought Index (SDI). The objective is to determine the frequency and severity of droughts and whether or not they have increased or decreased during this time period in Peninsular Malaysia. The computed monthly SPI shows that there are trends only for January, March, April and August, all of which are upward trends. In contrast, the computed monthly SDI shows that there are trends in the month of October, November, March, May and July that move downwards. However, the SDI and SPI drought trend analysis with all longer time scales were able to detect significant trends. Additionally, the researchers found that the SPI and SDI had very little correlations between them for drought trend analysis
Year: 2017