Methodology to characterize meteorological drought and drought frequency curves have been developed for the drought prone Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand, India. The annual and monsoon seasonal rainfall data for a period of 80 years (1913 – 1992) were analyzed to determine excess and deficit from normal. The annual and seasonal rainfall follows log normal and normal distribution respectively. Meteorological drought is investigated by various methods and using proposed methodology. Based on seasonal rainfall of 80 years the proposed methodology classified 45 years (56.25%) as drought years out of which incipient, large, severe, disastrous and extreme drought years were 12 (15.55%), 21(27.77%), 8 (10%), 3 (3.75%) and 1(1.25%) respectively. Drought indices were also developed and year 1966 was classified as the extreme drought year of the area. Multiyear drought characteristic reveals that as drought duration increased from 2 to 6 years the mean severity increased with increasing variability, though the mean drought intensity also increased gradually, but with decreasing variability.
Meteorological drought, drought characterization, drought indices, incipient drought, disastrous drought, extreme drought
