Spatiotemporal Assessment of Meteorological Drought of Paschim Medinipur District, West Bengal, India

The drought phenomenon is linked to the water scarcity and these are the pressing issues that require careful and thoughtful consideration. Drought in India mostly affects regions that are part of numerous plateaus, including the Chottanagpur plateau and the Deccan plateau. The Paschim Medinipur District of West Bengal, which is located in the southern portion of the Chottanagpur plateau, has recently experienced extreme and severe drought on multiple occasions. The assessment of the drought scenario in this region is, nevertheless, still very far from being finalized. Using the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) at various time intervals (e.g., 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and 48 months) between 1979 and 2014, we have evaluated drought both geographically and temporally in this study. Here, the drought evaluation metrics include peak intensity, average intensity, magnitude, occurrence rate (%) and trend. Peak intensity, magnitude, average drought intensity, and the frequency of Extreme to Severe (ES) droughts are all seen to decline noticeably as time steps move forward. The frequency of moderate droughts starts to rise as time moves forward. Peak intensity, magnitude, average drought intensity, drought duration, ES and moderate drought occurrence rate is high in southern and southwestern portions of Paschim Medinipur. Additionally, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) composite scores used to identify the drought-prone zones are estimated using the aforementioned parameters at various time steps. As the time step increases the area under the high and high moderate drought prone zone decreases, but very low and low drought prone area increases. Overall 16% area is found under high to high moderate drought prone category, whereas, approximately, 65% area is found under the low to low moderate drought category. The outcome of this research may be helpful to combat with drought and to make a fruitful move to manage water resources in the Paschim Medinipur region, West Bengal. Additionally, the study makes use of a superb methodology to comprehend the spatiotemporal variation of meteorological drought, which is applicable to all parts of the globe.