SCCS 2624

November 13, 2023

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DROUGHT

By
Dr Tharaga P C
 YOU MUST KNOW, OR BE ABLE TO DO THE FOLLOWING

• Assess which areas would be prone to droughts on both a

global, regional and local scale.
• Clearly understand the causes of droughts and link back to the
El Nino effect on a South African regional scale
• Be able to use examples of the effects of droughts and
desertification on people and the environment
• Be able to compare differences in vulnerability of different
groups of people
• Research management strategies using case studies
 DROUGHT

• is an extreme environmental condition characterised by an absence

of precipitation in the local and regional water cycle due to the
physical interactions of atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere
elements.
• Droughts are a natural part of the climate system,
– and many plants and animals are adapted to periods of dry
weather; unfortunately,
– these dry conditions can negatively affect agriculture during
vulnerable growth periods.
• Drought is primarily measured by its impact on
– water resources,
– agriculture,
– and ecosystems;
• as long as water needs are met, droughts are often overlooked.
 Droughts are among the most complex natural hazards
• Drought is a creeping phenomenon with a slow onset
• It isn’t easy to define when it begins and when it ends
• That makes prediction and hence, early warning so difficult
• The definition and the impact of droughts is highly depending
on regional or even local geographic and meteorological
conditions

5
 DEFINITIONS – TYPES OF DROUGHT

• Meteorological drought
– The degree of dryness or departure of actual precipitation from an expected
average or normal amount based on monthly, seasonal, or annual time
scales.

• Agricultural drought
– Soil moisture deficiencies relative to water demands of plant life, usually
crops.
• Hydrological drought
– The effects of precipitation shortfalls on stream flows and reservoir, lake, and
groundwater levels.

• Socio-economic drought
– The effect of demands for water exceeding the supply as a result of a
weather-related supply shortfall.
• The South African weather service defines a drought as a period of 12
moths when total rain received is below 75% of the average
DROUGHT IMPACTS
DEFINITIONS – AGRICULTURAL DROUGHT
DEFINITIONS - SOCIOECONOMIC DROUGHT
DEFINITIONS – HYDROLOGICAL DROUGHT
VOELVLEI DAM DURING A SEVERE DROUGHT IN THE WESTERN CAPE
VOELVLEI DAM - AUGUST - 2017
 THE CHALLENGE OF DROUGHT
1. They are slow-onset hazards, which may also recede as slowly.
2. Thus it is difficult to establish the exact timing of its start and finish.
3. Furthermore, the societal impacts may also accumulate slowly, and
then endure for months after the drought has physically receded.
4. Since drought is ignorant of political boundaries, drought-
monitoring activities are challenging because they are often carried
out based on political regions.
5. These challenges have important implications for drought relief
because funds are usually only distributed when and where an
official drought is called.
6. Thus droughts are difficult to identify and characterize, they impact
in non-structural and indirect ways and may linger for months or
years over large regions.
7. Often a drought has been going on for several months before
government institutions declare an official drought.
VULNERABILITY AND IMPACT

• Droughts impact large areas and cross jurisdictional boundaries,

hence all existing and future buildings, facilities and populations are
exposed to this hazard and could potentially be impacted.
• Droughts may cause a shortage of water for human and industrial
consumption, hydroelectric power, recreation and navigation.
• Water quality may also decline and the number and severity of
wildfires may increase.
• Severe droughts may result in the loss of agricultural crops and
forest products, undernourished wildlife and livestock, lower land
values, and higher unemployment.
• Therefore, not only are agricultural businesses vulnerable to drought,
but also hydro-electric power and other water-dependent industries,
such as forestry and tourism.
• Secondary hazards associated with drought are wildfire and
expansive soils, but the most direct impact of drought is economic
rather than loss of life or immediate destruction of property.
 RAINFALL ASSESSMENT

http://www.weathersa.co.za/images/climate/pdf/CLS-CI-Drought%20Monitoring-2016-06.pdf
 QUANTIFYING DROUGHT WITH INDICES

• For the application of interest, whether it is the condition of a

water supply system, the requirements for irrigation or the
sustainability of an ecosystem, a quantitative expression for
the state of drought is required.
• This is usually called a drought index and allows a farmer, a
manager or policy-maker to objectively analyse a system and
make quantitative management and policy decisions.
• Drought indices are used in both operational drought monitoring
and when forecasting drought within a warning system, where
an index can provide an objective basis for acting upon the
drought.
INDICES
1. Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI):

 Developed by Wayne Palmer in the 1960s,

 the PDSI is a widely used drought index considering long-term climate data,

 including temperature and precipitation.

 It provides a measure of drought intensity and duration,

 with values indicating the severity of drought conditions.

2. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI):

 SPI is based solely on precipitation data and quantifies how anomalous or

 extreme current precipitation is compared to historical records.

 It provides insights into meteorological drought conditions.

3. Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI):

 SPEI builds on the SPI by incorporating temperature and evapotranspiration data,

 allowing for a more comprehensive assessment of drought,

 especially in regions where temperature plays a significant role in drought development.

4. Percent of Normal (PN):

 PN calculates the percentage deviation of current precipitation from the long-term average.

 Values below 100% indicate below-average precipitation and potential drought conditions.
INDICES
1. Soil Moisture Indices:

 These indices consider soil moisture data to assess agricultural and hydrological drought conditions.

 Common soil moisture indices include the Soil Moisture Anomaly Index (SMAI) and the Soil Moisture Percentile (SMP).

2. Streamflow Drought Index (SDI):

 SDI uses streamflow data to assess hydrological drought conditions.

 It measures how streamflow compares to historical streamflow records for a specific location.

3. Z-Score (Standard Score):

 The Z-score standardises various meteorological and hydrological variables to assess drought.

 It expresses how many standard deviations a particular variable is from the long-term mean.

4. Deciles:

 Deciles divide historical data into ten equal parts,

 allowing for the analysis of how current conditions compare to the historical distribution.

 Deciles are often used in hydrological drought assessments.

5. Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI):

 SWSI combines multiple indicators, including precipitation,

 reservoir storage, and streamflow,

 to assess water supply conditions in regions dependent on surface water sources.

6. Vegetation Indices (e.g., Normalized Difference Vegetation Index - NDVI):

 Vegetation indices use satellite data to assess drought impacts on vegetation health and cover.

 Reduced vegetation activity can be indicative of agricultural or ecological drought conditions.

7. Evaporative Stress Index (ESI):

 ESI combines temperature and satellite-based observations to assess evaporative stress on vegetation,

 helping to monitor agricultural drought conditions.

 DROUGHT MONITORING FOR PREPAREDNESS
SAMPLE OF DROUGHT INDICES
• Percent of Normal Precipitation
• Deciles
• Aridity Index (AI)
• Palmer Drought Index (PDI) suite of indices
– (based principally on antecedent rainfall and
temperature)
• Crop Moisture Index (CMI)
– (based on measured soil moisture vs. normal amount)
• Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI)
• Reclamation Drought Index (RDI)
• Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)
– (a probabilistic index based on rainfall amount compared to
normals for the same period)
 WHAT IS THE SPI?

• Developed in 1993 in the United States (McKee

et al. 1993, CSU)
• Being studied or applied in over 50 countries
• Simple to use (precipitation only)
• Temporal flexibility allows the user to look at and
monitor all water resources in a region
 HOW THE SPI WORKS
• Need 30 years of continuous monthly precipitation data
• SPI time scale intervals longer than 24 months may be
unreliable
• Is spatially invariant in its interpretation
• Probability based (probability of observed precipitation
transformed into an index) nature makes it well suited for risk
management
• It is NOT simply the “difference of precipitation from the
mean… divided by the standard deviation”
• Precipitation is normalized using a probability distribution so
that values of SPI are actually seen as standard deviations
from the median
• Normal distribution allows for estimating both dry and wet
periods
• Accumulated values can be used to analyze drought severity
Classification Scale for SPI Values
Table 1.
Classification scale for SPI values (after Edwards and McKee 1996)

SPI Values Category Time in Category (%)

 +2.00 Extremely Wet 2.3
+1.50 to +1.99 Very Wet 4.4
+1.00 to +1.49 Moderately Wet 9.2
-0.99 to +0.99 Near Normal 68.2
-1.00 to -1.49 Moderately Dry 9.2
-1.50 to -1.99 Severely Dry 4.4
 -2.00 Extremely Dry 2.3
EXAMPLE OF SPI MAP
PALMER DROUGHT SEVERITY INDEX (PDSI)

• The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) uses readily

available temperature and precipitation data to estimate
relative dryness.
• Effective in determining long-term drought, especially over
low and middle latitudes
• By using surface air temperature and a physical water
balance model, the PDSI takes into account the basic
effect of global warming through potential
evapotranspiration
• Takes precedent (prior month) conditions into account
 PDSI LIMITATIONS
• Not as comparable across regions as the Standardized
Precipitation Index (SPI), but this can be alleviated by using the
self-calibrating PDSI
• Lacks multi-timescale features of indices like the SPI, making it
difficult to correlate with specific water resources like runoff,
snowpack, reservoir storage, etc.
• Does not account for snow or ice (delayed runoff); assumes
precipitation is immediately available
UNDERSTANDING THE RISK OR IMPACTS OF DROUGHT
Direct = Reduced crop, rangeland, and forest productivity;
increased fire hazard; reduced water levels; increased livestock
and wildlife mortality rates; and damage to wildlife and fish
habitat
Indirect = consequences
• e.g. a reduction in crop, rangeland, and forest productivity may
result in reduced income for farmers
• increased prices for food and timber, unemployment, reduced
tax revenues because of reduced expenditures
• increased crime, foreclosures on bank loans to farmers and
businesses, migration, and disaster relief programs.
UNDERSTANDING THE RISK OR IMPACTS OF DROUGHT
Direct or primary impacts are usually biophysical.
Impacts can be categorized as economic, environmental, or
social.
Can be positive impact also provide water-related services
• income loss is another indicator
• Environmental losses
• Social impacts mainly involve public safety, health, conflicts
between water users, reduced quality of life, and inequities in
the distribution of impacts and disaster relief.
Drought represents one of the most important natural triggers for
malnutrition and famine,
ECONOMIC IMPACTS
Costs and losses to agricultural producers
Crops
• annual and perennial crop losses
• Damage to crop quality
• Income loss for farmers due to reduced crop • High cost/unavailability of water for
yields
• Reduced productivity of cropland (wind
erosion, long-term loss of organic matter,
etc.)
• Insect infestation & Plant disease
• Wildlife damage to crops
• Increased irrigation costs
• Cost of new or supplemental water resource • Decreased stock weights
development (wells, dams, pipelines)
Timber
• Loss from timber production
• Tree disease
• Insect infestation
• Impaired productivity of forest land
• Direct loss of trees, especially young ones
Livestock
• Reduced productivity of rangeland
• Reduced milk production
• Forced reduction of foundation stock
• Closure/limitation of public lands to
grazing
livestock
• High cost/unavailability of feed for
livestock
• Increased feed transportation costs
• High livestock mortality rates
• Disruption of reproduction cycles (delayed
breeding, more miscarriages)
• Increased predation
• Range & Wildland fires
Fisheries
• Loss from fishery production
• Damage to fish habitat
• Loss of fish and other aquatic organisms
due to decreased flows
 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
• Damage to animal species & Disease
• Reduction and degradation of fish and
wildlife habitat
• Lack of feed and drinking water
• Greater mortality due to increased
contact with agricultural producers, as
animals seek food from farms and
producers are less tolerant of the
intrusion
• Increased vulnerability to predation
Migration and concentration
• loss of wildlife in some areas and too
many wildlife in other areas
• Loss of biodiversity
• Lower water levels in dams, reservoirs,
lakes,
• Reduced flow from springs & stream flow
• Loss of wetlands
• Estuarine impacts (e.g., changes in
salinity levels)
• Increased groundwater depletion, land
subsidence, reduced recharge
• Water quality effects (e.g., salt
concentration, increased water
temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen,
turbidity)
• Damage to plant communities
• Loss of biodiversity
• Loss of trees - urban landscapes,
shelterbelts, wild conservation areas
• Increased number and severity of fires
• Wind and water erosion of soils, reduced
soil quality
• Air quality effects (e.g., dust, pollutants)
• Visual and landscape quality (e.g., dust,
vegetative cover, etc.)
SOCIAL IMPACTS
Health
• Mental and physical stress
• Health-related low-flow problems
• Reductions in nutrition
• Loss of human life
• Public safety from forest and range
fires
• Increased respiratory ailments
• Increased disease caused by wildlife
concentrations
• Increased conflicts -Water user &
Political & Management & Other
social conflicts
• Reduced quality of life, change
lifestyle
• Increased poverty in general
• Population migrations
• Loss of aesthetic values
• Reduction or modification of
recreational activities
• Disruption of cultural belief systems
• Reevaluation of social values
• Public dissatisfaction with government
drought response
• Perceptions of inequity in relief,
possibly related to socioeconomic
status, ethnicity, age, gender, seniority
• Loss of cultural sites
• Increased data/information needs,
coordination of dissemination activities
• Recognition of institutional restraints
on water use
FORECASTING DROUGHT

Requires monitoring...
• of water levels in rivers, dams, groundwater, water tables, soil moisture,
etc
• of other emerging signs of drought impacts
• of actual precipitation and predictions
• Weather services can forecast weather up to 10 days with a fair degree
of accuracy
– However, convective rainfall typical for Fee State summer rains are
hard to predict locally
• Longer-term forecast (10 days to a month) have a poor resolution, but
general weather patterns may be accurately foreseen
• Seasonal forecasts (over several months) based on global weather
patterns (e.g. based on El Nino and La Nina) have some value but are
not reliable
• It requires bringing the different sources of information together and
analysing them timely.
DROUGHT MANAGEMENT PLAN (DMP)

• Appropriate research plan

• Drought predictions
• Early warning and monitoring systems (satellite remote sensing)
• Decision support tools for drought management
• Establishment of soil-crop-climate norms for agriculture in a reasonably
• homogeneous farming area (RHFA) in order to grow profitable agricultural
products (not necessarily food)
• Establishment of norms and standards for grassland and animals in RHFAs,
as in designating herd sizes and selling off livestock before the drought event
• Development of responsive farming plans in the sense that profitable farming
is not exclusively food production, but cash crops that can be profitably sold
• Improvement of research, including that on climate change
• Determination of the impact of global environmental change on drought
disaster characteristics and agricultural production
COMPONENTS OF DROUGHT PLANS
• Monitoring, early warning and information delivery systems
– Integrated monitoring of key indicators
– Use of appropriate indices
– Development/delivery of information and decision-support
tools
• Risk and impact assessment
– Conduct of risk/vulnerability assessments
– Monitoring/archiving of impacts
• Mitigation and response
– Proactive measures to increase coping capacity
MITIGATION OF DROUGHT IN AGRICULTURE
Agronomic practises
• Change planting dates
• Change tillage & mulch practices
• Change fertiliser / manure applications
• Intercropping
• Short season cultivars or crops
• Disease & pest management
Water management
• storage of runoff water in dams
• water harvesting
• mini-in-field catchments
• organic mulching