Analysis of Meteorological Drought Pattern During Different Climatic and Cropping Seasons in Bangladesh

Abstract

Drought is one of the most frequent natural disasters in Bangladesh which severely affect agro‐based economy and people's livelihood in almost every year. Characterization of droughts in a systematic way is therefore critical in order to take necessary actions toward drought mitigation and sustainable development. In this study, standardized precipitation index is used to understand the spatial distribution of meteorological droughts during various climatic seasons such as premonsoon, monsoon, and winter seasons as well as cropping seasons such as Pre‐Kharif (March‐May), Kharif (May‐October), and Rabi (December‐February). Rainfall data collected from 29 rainfall gauge stations located in different parts of the country were used for a period of 50 years (1961‐2010). The study reveals that the spatial characteristics of droughts vary widely according to season. Premonsoon droughts are more frequent in the northwest, monsoon droughts mainly occur in the west and northwest, winter droughts in the west, and the Rabi and Kharif droughts are more frequent in the north and northwest of Bangladesh. It is expected that the findings of the study will support drought monitoring and mitigation activities in Bangladesh.

Space-time trends in U.S. meteorological droughts

“…To understand spatial variations well, the point estimates of meteorological observations are smoothed using ordinary kriging at a horizontal grid resolution of 0.5 ᵒ with the commonly used spherical semi-variogram model (Ahmed et al, 2014). Kriging has been widely applied in the literature for spatial analysis of droughts (Alamgir et al, 2015;Kim et al, 2002;Wang et al, 2014). Since the overall results are based on trends in individual station-based observations, we must emphasize that the spatial smoothing does not influence our analysis or insights.…”

Farm-level adaptation to climate change in Western Bangladesh: An analysis of adaptation dynamics, profitability and risks

“…Overuse, degradation and changes in resource quality (e.g., soils) will intensify population pressure on an already declining area of arable land per capita and scarce water resources (Alauddin and Sharma, 2013;Yu et al, 2010). Drought is one of the extreme weather events that adversely affects agriculture and rural livelihoods in western and north-western Bangladesh (Shahid and Behrawan, 2008;Alamgir et al, 2015).…”

Impacts of Climate Change on Crop Production in Bangladesh: A Review

“…Although most of the region in Bangladesh are affected by draught, it is more frequent in the northwest part of the country [85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94]. Alamgir, et al [95] depicted that Pre-monsoon droughts are more prevalent in the northwest, monsoon droughts are more frequent in west and northwest and the winter droughts mainly affect in the west. However, Shahid and Hazarika [94] revealed that almost 42% of northwestern Bangladesh suffer from groundwater scarcity in summer season due to irrigation and drought.…”