Regionalization of Drought across Pakistan

Abstract

Due to Pakistan’s complex hydro-climatic and topographical features, drought is a severe problem. It is necessary to regionalize various topographical and hydrometeorological occurrences into uniform zones. The regionalization of clusters across Pakistan has been examined and analyzed using the hierarchical classification of principal components (HCPC). Five statistically homogenous zones were made, which were validated through the cluster validation indices. Univariate discordancy tests were run using the drought’s severity and duration as inputs. Over 12 months, drought was regionalized for SPEI time scales, indicating regional discordancy in cluster 4, while cluster 2 had a smaller number of stations, which were further adjusted to ensure homogeneity. The results of this research might be utilized to offer the fundamental information needed to develop a regional drought mitigation plan.

Keywords

• HCPC
• regionalization
• SPEI
• univariate
• homogeneity
• discordancy test