Context: A recent study has pointed out that India could experience more flash droughts by the end of this 21st century.

• In 1979, India faced a severe flash drought which affected about 40% of the country and the agriculture with a loss of about Rs 5,000 crores.

Major Highlights

• The ongoing climate change has caused a significant increase in global temperature and this can lead to more and more flash droughts.
• The frequency of concurrent hot and dry extremes is projected to rise by about five-fold, causing an approximately seven-fold increase in flash droughts like 1979 drought in India.
• The increased frequency of flash droughts can have extreme implications for crop production, irrigation demands and groundwater abstraction in India.
• If the ‘Paris Agreement’ goals to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C are met, the numbers and frequency of the projected flash droughts may go down.

Flash droughts

• Flash drought is simply the rapid onset or intensification of drought.
• Normally, developing drought conditions take months, but these happen within a week or in two weeks’ time.
• It is characterised with lower-than-normal rates of precipitation, abnormally high temperatures, winds, and radiation.
• Higher temperature increases evapotranspiration and further lowers soil moisture, which decreases rapidly as drought conditions continue.
• They are caused by several factors like atmospheric anomalies, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, industrial aerosols, and land-use/land-cover change etc.

Key Facts

• The top five flash droughts based on the overall severity score occurred in 1979 followed by 2009, 1951, 1986 and 2005.

About Drought

• It is a normal, recurrent feature of climate and occurs in all climatic regimes and is usually characterized in terms of its spatial extension, intensity and duration.
• It is difficult to provide a precise and universally accepted definition of drought due to its varying characteristics and impacts across different regions such as rainfall patterns, human response and resilience etc.

Drought Prone Areas

• In India, around 68% of the country is prone to drought to varying degrees.
• The 35% area which receives rainfall between 750 mm and 1125 mm is considered drought prone while 33% receiving less than 750 mm is chronically drought prone.

Classification
Meteorological Drought

• It is classified based on rainfall deficiency with respect to long term average, where 25% or less is normal, 26-50% is moderate and more than 50% is severe.

Hydrological Drought

• It is defined as deficiencies in surface and subsurface water supplies leading to a lack of water for normal and specific needs.
• Such conditions arise even in times of average (or above average) precipitation when increased usage of water diminishes the reserves.

Agricultural Drought

• It is identified with soil moisture deficiency in relation to meteorological droughts and climatic factors and their impacts on agricultural production and economic profitability.

Monitoring

• The Ministry of Agriculture is the nodal Ministry in respect of monitoring and managing drought conditions and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is the designated agency for providing drought early warning and forecasting.
• The Ministry of Earth Sciences in collaboration with Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has set up 89 centres for short and medium range monitoring and forecasting of weather.
• The National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System developed by the Department of Space monitors vegetation cover through satellite data based helping in drought assessment by comparative evaluation of vegetation cover with those of previous years.

Key Drought Indicators: Rainfall, storage water levels in reservoirs, surface and groundwater levels, sowing in drought conditions and hydrological data.

Impact

• Drought causes economic, environmental and social impacts.
• The first round impacts on agriculture and water resources account for a significant proportion of drought impacts.
• Others are follow-up impacts on the population immediately affected by drought, such as farmer incomes and the health, nutrition, and education status of drought-affected populations.
• A third level is on downstream activities, such as industries reliant on agriculture and water.
• Finally, there are the diffuse and longer-term impacts on growth, trade, foreign exchange, fiscal balance, and so on.
• Crop Weather Watch Group (CWWG), an inter-Ministerial mechanism, evaluates information and data furnished by IMD and other scientific and technical bodies to determine the likely impact of meteorological events and other environmental parameters on agriculture.

Management Policy

• The Ministry of Water Resources is involved in drought management mainly on policy guidelines, monitoring and technical and financial assistance.
• National Water Policy 2012 states that the land, soil, energy and water management with scientific inputs should be used to evolve different agricultural strategies and improve soil and water productivity to manage droughts.
• Integrated farming systems and non-agricultural developments may also be considered for livelihood support and poverty alleviation.
• Policy intervention is also made facilitating relaxation in project clearances, funding etc. for drought prone areas.

Drought Proofing Measures

• Irrigation is the most effective drought proofing mechanism and single biggest factor of stability in agriculture production.
• Construction of storage dams.
• Early completion of projects by extending technical and financial assistance to irrigation projects through schemes like:
• Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme.
• Command area Development and Water Management Programme.
• Repair, Renovation and Restoration of water bodies.

Mitigation

• The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the Integrated Drylands Development Programme (IDDP) with the overall goal to strengthen resilience by working on the twin vulnerabilities of poverty and unsustainable land management in the drylands.
• The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) developed a Drought Risk Reduction framework that takes an integrated development approach and provides a comprehensive framework for both higher-level and local action.
• The Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP) and its partners have adopted three pillars of drought management:
• Drought monitoring and early warning systems to determine drought status.
• Vulnerability and impact assessment to determine who and what are at risk and why.
• Mitigation, drought preparedness, and response to set out actions and measures to mitigate drought impacts and to prepare to respond to drought emergencies.
• There is a need for a more organized and common conceptual framework for assessing drought risk and for analysing the “Benefits of Action and Costs of Inaction” (BACI).
• The framework is set out within the model for the overall process of developing a National Drought Management Policy, which was codified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) in their 2014 National Drought Management Policy Guidelines.