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Spatiotemporal assessment of terrestrial water storage over Indian sub-continent
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  • Shivam Rawat,
  • Abinesh Ganapathy,
  • Ravi Guntu,
  • Ankit Agarwal
Shivam Rawat
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

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Abinesh Ganapathy
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
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Ravi Guntu
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
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Ankit Agarwal
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
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Abstract

Drought is a natural disaster that mainly affects water resources, agriculture, and a country’s social and economic development due to its long-term and frequent occurrence. Therefore, it is important to characterize and monitor drought and its propagation to minimize the impact. Precipitation and Terrestrial water storage are popular hydrological components used frequently to understand the drought process. However, spatiotemporal assessment of drought propagation over India based on terrestrial water storage is unexplored. In this study, the terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA) obtained from a Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and Combined Climatological Deviation Index (CCDI) are used to characterize the drought at different spatial scales. The changing pattern of TWSA and CCDI is investigated using the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and its slope is estimated using the Theil-Sen slope estimator. TWSA trends unravel that the Ganga and Indus River Basin have significant negative trends throughout the year. However, the trends are oscillating for Peninsular basins. The major river basins Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra shows decreasing trends for all seasons; however, Cauvery, Mahanadi, Krishna, and the Godavari show decreasing trends for winter and Post-monsoon season and increasing trends for pre-monsoon and monsoon season. It shows that Ganga, Indus, and Brahmaputra river basins are more prone to drought in the near future.