Hydrological Sciences Journal

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Can multiscalar meteorological drought indices

detect soil moisture droughts? A study of Indian
regions

Prabir Kumar Das, S. K. Mohinuddin, Subrata Kumar Midya, Dilip Kumar Das,
Richa Sharma & Soumya Bandyopadhyay

To cite this article: Prabir Kumar Das, S. K. Mohinuddin, Subrata Kumar Midya, Dilip Kumar
Das, Richa Sharma & Soumya Bandyopadhyay (2021) Can multiscalar meteorological drought
indices detect soil moisture droughts? A study of Indian regions, Hydrological Sciences Journal,
66:9, 1475-1487, DOI: 10.1080/02626667.2021.1942475

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2021.1942475

Published online: 09 Jul 2021.

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HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL
2021, VOL. 66, NO. 9, 1475–1487
https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2021.1942475

Can multiscalar meteorological drought indices detect soil moisture droughts? A

study of Indian regions
Prabir Kumar Dasa, S. K. Mohinuddinb, Subrata Kumar Midyac, Dilip Kumar Das†d, Richa Sharmab
and Soumya Bandyopadhyaya
a
Regional Remote Sensing Centre-East, NRSC, Kolkata, India; bDepartment of Remote Sensing, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, India;
c
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India; dAgricultural Chemistry and Soil Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata,
India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The present study aims to explore the potential of multiscalar meteorological drought indices in Received 16 June 2020
detecting soil moisture drought events. The standardized soil moisture index (SSMI), standardized Accepted 28 April 2021
precipitation index (SPI), standardized evapotranspiration index (SEI), standardized precipitation evapo­ EDITOR
transpiration index (SPEI) and multivariate moisture anomaly index (MMAI) were computed using long- A. Fiori
term (1980–2015) MERRA-2 soil moisture, precipitation and/or evapotranspiration data products. The
performances of the meteorological indices were evaluated based on a zone-wise and spatial correlation ASSOCIATE EDITOR
approach along with failure rate (FR) and false alarm rate (FAR) values. The spatial correlation was highest D. Bressiani
in SEI, followed by MMAI, in comparison to SPI and SPEI. FR and FAR values indicated that SEI is the best KEYWORDS
index for detecting soil moisture drought events, whereas MMAI outperformed the other indices in standardized soil moisture
representing combined drought events, i.e. meteorological or/and soil moisture droughts. The outcome index; multivariate moisture
of the study may be useful in retrieving information about soil moisture drought over a region using only anomaly index;
meteorological parameters. meteorological drought;
combined drought; soil
moisture drought; MERRA-2

1 Introduction (iii) hydrological and (iv) socio-economic droughts. However,

Drought, a widespread hydroclimatic extreme leading to agri­
cultural as well as societal catastrophe, is considered the cost­
liest of all natural disasters (Wilhite 2000, Dai 2013, NCEI
2016). Although there is some controversy over changes in
drought during the last few decades (Sheffield et al. 2012, Dai
2013, Damberg and AghaKouchak 2014), increasing drought
intensity and magnitude are evident in most parts of the world
(Masih et al. 2014). The rising temperature from global warm­
ing may not lead directly to drought, but drought incidences
may produce concomitant alterations in the rate of global
warming (Trenberth et al. 2014).
At the global scale, the economic losses due to drought may
amount to several billions of US dollars (Wilhite 2000).
According to Murthy and SeshaSai (2010), agriculture over
58.6 million hectares in India was damaged due to drought
incidence in 1987, and more than 250 million people were
directly or indirectly affected. Similarly, one of the worst
drought incidences in the Indian region during 2002 led to
a reduction in the crop sown area by ~12 million hectares and
an associated food grain production loss of ~48 million tons
(Murthy and SeshaSai 2010). Hence, clear understanding,
proper monitoring and objective damage assessments of
drought incidences are essential for developing sustainable
management plans towards minimizing the impacts of
drought.
For ease of understanding and management, droughts are
broadly categorized into (i) meteorological, (ii) agricultural,
recent studies have highlighted the importance of soil moisture
in regulating drought conditions (Seneviratne 2012, Teuling
et al. 2013, AghaKouchak 2014). Being a key component of
both the water and energy cycles, alterations in soil moisture
directly impact the agricultural system as well as water avail­
ability (Wang et al. 2011). Hence, “soil moisture drought” is
a new addition to the list of drought categories. It generally
arises as a consequence of meteorological drought and may
lead to agricultural drought (Wang et al. 2011, Mishra et al.
2015, Halwatura et al. 2017, Zhang et al. 2017, Manning et al.
2018, Blyverket et al. 2019). Soil moisture drought is generally
defined as a deficit in moisture within the upper soil layer
relative to its normal value (Manning et al. 2018). It generally
arises due to deviations in the supply and demand components
of the water cycle, i.e. the antecedent precipitation and evapo­
transpiration (Teuling et al. 2013). However, the individual
influence of these two components is regulated by the complex
interactions of several land-atmospheric processes. Hence, the
quantification and monitoring of soil moisture drought may
enhance our understanding of the transformation of meteor­
ological to agricultural drought and may improve simulations
of agricultural drought scenarios based on meteorological
records and information.
Soil moisture drought information is generally derived
from physical land-surface models and empirical indices
(Mitchell et al. 2004, Sheffield et al. 2014, Manning et al.
2018). Several soil moisture drought indices incorporating

CONTACT Prabir Kumar Das prabir111@gmail.com Regional Remote Sensing Centre-East, NRSC, Kolkata, India
© 2021 IAHS
1476 P. K. DAS ET AL.

soil moisture information have been proposed by researchers,

such as the soil moisture drought index (Hollinger et al. 1993),
soil moisture deficit index (Narasimhan and Srinivasan 2005),
standardized soil moisture index (Hao and AghaKouchak
2013), soil water deficit index (Martínez-Fernández et al.
2015), drought severity index (Cammalleri et al. 2016), soil
moisture anomaly percentage index (Mao et al. 2017), etc.
However, the applications of these drought indices are limited
due to the sparse density or unavailability of long-term soil
moisture data (Zawadzki and Kędzior 2016). On the other
hand, the physical models used to simulate soil moisture are
very data intensive, requiring e.g. location-specific soil proper­
ties, information regarding irrigation availability and infra­
structure, long-term meteorological parameters, etc.
Moreover, the approximations of several processes and the
unavailability of reliable datasets add more uncertainty to the
estimation of accurate soil moisture data (Chowdhary and
Singh 2010, Wang et al. 2016). Hence, it is necessary to develop
simpler drought indices that are less data intensive, that
involve simple computation and, more importantly, can be
computed using meteorological parameters only. Figure 1. The study area with its meteorological regions, viz. northwest, central,
northeast and peninsular India. NW: Northwest; NE: Northeast.
The multiscalar drought indices, such as the standardized
precipitation index (SPI), standardized precipitation evapo­
transpiration index (SPEI), etc., were found to perform better
Indian mainland is generally classified into four homogeneous
than other drought indices considering a two-layer bucket
regions, i.e. northeast, northwest, central and peninsular India
model (Wang et al. 2015). Recent studies have also highlighted
(Guhathakurta et al. 2014). The annual average rainfall values
the importance of integrating temperature in drought indices
(% standard deviation) are 1324.6 (11%), 618.7 (19%), 976.4
to address the multivariate nature of soil moisture drought
(14%) and 730.5 (15%) mm for northeast, northwest, central
(Teuling et al. 2013, AghaKouchak 2014, Manning et al. 2018).
and peninsular India, respectively.
Drought indices such as the Palmer drought severity index
(Palmer 1965), SPEI (Vicente-Serrano et al. 2010), reconnais­
sance drought index (RDI; Tsakiris and Vangelis 2005) and 3 Data and methodology
multivariate moisture anomaly index (MMAI; Das et al. 2017)
3.1 Data processing
consider the temperature component in terms of evapotran­
spiration while capturing the impact of both precipitation and The long-term (1980–2015) total surface precipitation
temperature on drought conditions in changing climate (PRECTOT), evapotranspiration (EVLAND) and total profile
scenarios. soil moisture content (PRMC) from the Modern-Era
Therefore, the present study aims to explore the potential of Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications-2
several multiscalar meteorological drought indices in detecting (MERRA-2) were downloaded from the Goddard Earth
soil moisture droughts over the Indian region using long-term Sciences Data and Information Services Centre (http://disc.
soil moisture and meteorological parameters. sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/mdisc/). The soil moisture data from
MERRA-Land reanalysis were used, as it provides improved
modelled soil moisture data compared with the regular
2 Study area
MERRA model for hydrological studies (Reichle et al. 2011).
The study was been conducted over the Indian mainland The use of more accurate precipitation forcing along with
(Fig. 1), i.e. between 08°04ʹ and 37°06ʹN latitude and between improved catchment surface models is the key to the improved
68°07ʹ and 97°25ʹE longitude. Agriculture, being the direct output over the regular MERRA model. The datasets are avail­
source of livelihood for more than 50% of the population able in a ½° (latitude) by ⅔° (longitude) grid at a monthly
and a major contributor to the national economy (i.e. 17– interval for the period 1979–2015. The datasets are down­
18% of gross value added), plays a key role in India’s sustain­ loaded in netcdf (.nc) format, and further spatial subsetting
ability and development. Around 68% of the country’s agri­ was carried out to restrict our study to the Indian mainland.
cultural area – covering ~278 districts of 11 states – is prone to Many previous studies have been carried out on the valida­
drought-like situations (Nandakumar 2009, Nagaraja 2012). tion of the MERRA-2 soil moisture products using in situ soil
Winter (January–February), pre-monsoon (March–May), moisture data (Reichle et al. 2011, 2017, Yi et al. 2011, Liu et al.
monsoon (June–September) and post-monsoon (October– 2014, Bosilovich et al. 2015). The studies revealed that the
December) are the major seasons of the Indian mainland MERRA-derived soil moisture corresponds favourably with
(www.imdpune.gov.in). Around 80% of the total rainfall is in situ observations; moreover, its advantages over Advanced
generally received during monsoon season (Sahai et al. 2003). Microwave Scanning Radiometer on the Earth Observing
Based on the mean long-term rainfall and its variability, the System (AMSR-E) soil moisture products were also established

because it is less limited by dense vegetation (Yi et al. 2011).
Another study, carried out by Liu et al. (2014), showed that the
MERRA data were closest to the climatological observations of
all five models derived from re-analysed soil moisture pro­
ducts, viz. MERRA, ERA-Interim (ERA), Japanese 25-year
Reanalysis (JRA), Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR)
and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).
Similarly, validation of MERRA-2 soil moisture products
using 220–320 in situ measurements across North America,
Europe and Australia demonstrated its efficiency in represent­
ing surface as well as root zone soil moisture (Reichle et al.
2017). Based on the average anomaly correlation and unbiased
Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) calculated using the in situ
soil moisture data from 140 network sites, the MERRA-2 soil
moisture was found to be best, with improved soil moisture
dynamics, among various reanalysed data products (Reichle
et al. 2011, Bosilovich et al. 2015). A recent study by Modanessi
et al. (2020) over parts of India concluded that MERRA-
2-derived soil moisture is capable of explaining drought inci­
dence and its impact on crops. Similarly, high agreement
between the agricultural drought information derived from
satellite images and soil moisture drought derived from
MERRA-2 data for several drought and normal years during
the last 34 years was reported for all of India (Das et al. 2020).
3.2 Preparation of standardized indices
The long-term precipitation and evapotranspiration data were
transformed into a 6-month standardized precipitation index
(SPI) and standardized evapotranspiration index (SEI), respec­
tively. A very small time period may not able to capture the
drought occurrence, whereas a much longer period may pro­
vide redundant information (Tornros and Menzel 2014).
Hence, many researchers have recommended a time period
of 3 to 6 months for soil moisture drought studies (Tornros
and Menzel 2014, Manning et al. 2018). According to the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO 2012), soil moist­
ure or agricultural conditions respond to precipitation anoma­
lies on a relatively short time scale, which generally varies from
3 to 6 months. Hence, in the present study the 6-month time
period was selected, considering the probable resilience of the
soil systems. The gamma probability distribution was adopted
for calculating SPI, whereas log-logistic distribution was
selected for SEI (McKee et al. 1993, Das et al. 2017). As
suggested by Das et al. (2017), the SEI values were multiplied
by −1 to bring them into the same scale (sign) as SPI.
Subsequently, two recently developed drought indices, i.e.
SPEI and MMAI, integrating both precipitation and evapo­
transpiration to represent anomalous drought or moisture
conditions, were computed using the methodology described
by Vicente-Serrano et al. (2010) and Das et al. (2017), respec­
tively. The SPEI, representing a simple climatic water balance,
was calculated by fitting 6-monthly aggregated differences
between precipitation and evapotranspiration into a log-
logistic probability distribution function. According to Das
et al. (2017), the MMAI is more efficient than SPEI in captur­
ing the impact of both precipitation and evapotranspiration in
representing anomalous moisture conditions. The MMAI was
computed by coupling two univariate variables, i.e. SPI and
HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL 1477
SEI, using a joint probability distribution function. For details
of MMAI one may refer to Das et al. (2017).
Unlike SPI and SEI, the standardized soil moisture index
(SSMI) was calculated by fitting the 6-month aggregated soil
moisture data into a non-parametric empirical probability
distribution function, rather than any specific distribution
function, i.e. parametric (Farahmand and AghaKouchak
2015). In the present study, the marginal distribution of soil
moisture was derived using the empirical Gringorten plotting
position (Gringorten 1963):
i 0:44
p ðx i Þ ¼ (1)
n þ 0:12
where n and i represent the sample size and rank of non-zero
soil moisture data in ascending order. p(xi) is the correspond­
ing empirical probability. The SSMI was computed by fitting
the output of Equation (1) into the following equation:
SSMI ¼ ϕ 1 ð pÞ (2)
−1
Where ϕ represents the normal distribution function, and
p denotes the probability values derived from Equation (1).
The scale of all the standardized indices, i.e. SPI, SEI, SPEI,
MMAI and SSMI, ranges between −4 and +4. Negative values
denote drought or anomalous moisture conditions, whereas
positive values indicate normal or wetter conditions.
3.3 Evaluation of drought indices with respect to soil
moisture droughts
The agreement between the soil moisture drought informa­
tion, i.e. SSMI, and other meteorological drought indices, i.e.
SPI, SEI, SPEI, MMAI, were analysed using both zone-wise
and spatial correlation techniques. Subsequently, the efficien­
cies of all meteorological indices to detect soil moisture
drought were calculated using the failure rate (FR) and the
false alarm rate (FAR), as suggested by Halwatura et al. (2017).
FR denotes the proportion of drought events that were not
detected by meteorological indices, i.e. SPI or SPEI or SEI or
MMAI, but that were soil moisture drought conditions based
on SSMI values of less than minus one, i.e. SSMI < −1.
Minimum FR values indicate a better capability of detecting
soil moisture drought conditions.
SSMIn SIn
FR ¼ (3)
SSMIn
where SSMIn is the number of droughts based on SSMI and SIn is
the number of drought occurrences based on meteorological
indices.
On the other hand, FAR represents the proportion of drought
events that were detected by meteorological indices, i.e. SPI or
SPEI or SEI or MMAI, but that were not actually soil moisture
drought conditions. Again, lower FAR values denote the ability
to reduce error in detecting soil moisture drought incidents.
SIn SSMIn
FAR ¼ (4)
SIn
Hence, FR and FAR are tools for estimating under- and over­
performances of the target index.
1478 P. K. DAS ET AL.

3.4 Lag-correction in time-series drought indices with SEI, were estimated to find the agreement among the different
respect to SSMI indices over an individual grid. Higher (lower) correlation
values generally denote a better (worse) representation of soil
Based on the resilience of systems, meteorological drought
moisture drought conditions. The correlation coefficient
may or may not transform into soil moisture drought.
values generally ranged between 0.5 and 0.9 over the Indian
Moreover, the transformation may not be immediate; it may
mainland for SPI and SPEI (Fig. 3). It was interesting to find
be delayed. Hence, in the present study, the existing response
that the correlation values as well as their spatial distribution
lags for all meteorological indices to SSMI time-series data
were similar for SPI and SPEI. The lower values of 0.5–0.6 were
were estimated over each grid. The lag existing in the time-
distributed over the western coast and parts of eastern as well
series meteorological indices for an individual grid was tested
as central India, whereas the higher values of >0.7 were mainly
based on maximum correlation values within the range of −5
confined to northwestern Indian and parts of peninsular India.
to +5 months with respect to the time-series SSMI. Based on
However, in major parts of the Indian mainland, the correla­
the lag information, the time-series meteorological indices
tion values between SSMI and SPI or SPEI were within 0.6
were adjusted for all grids, to eliminate the response lag
to 0.7.
towards overcoming the probable reason for underperfor­
In the case of MMAI, the values were >0.8 over major parts
mance of some of the indices. Further, the lag-adjusted
of India, except for northeastern India where correlation
meteorological indices were tested for their agreement and
values varied between 0.5 and 0.8 (Fig. 3). The northeastern
their efficiency in representing soil moisture drought, using
region is dominated by high orographic rainfall associated
correlation statistics and estimated FR and FAR values. Details
with steep slopes due to the mountainous landscape, which
of the entire methodology are provided in Fig. 2.
may be the reason for the relatively poor association between
precipitation and soil moisture over that region. The correla­
4 Results and discussion tion between SSMI and SEI was found to be the highest, i.e.
>0.9, among all meteorological drought indices over the Indian
4.1 Spatial correlation of meteorological indices with
region except for parts of northeastern India.
SSMI
According to Halwatura et al. (2017), the estimated correla­
Coefficients of correlation between SSMI and the other tion values between soil moisture drought and SPI were within
meteorological drought indices, i.e. SPI, SPEI, MMAI and a range of 0.36 to 0.69 for different sites over Eastern Australia,

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the overall methodology.


Figure 3. Maps of the spatial correlation between SSMI and (a) SPI, (b) SPEI, (c) MMAI and (d) SEI.
whereas for RDI (an index incorporating precipitation and
evapotranspiration), the correlation coefficient was found to
be lower. Similar results, with correlation values of less than
0.70 between SPI and soil moisture, were obtained by Gwak
et al. (2017) and Budi et al. (2008). The SPEI works similarly to
or better than SPI to represent soil moisture drought, with
correlation values ranging from 0.6 to 0.9 for different sites at
optimum time scales (Wang et al. 2015). Das et al. (2017)
found that SPEI largely represented the SPI only and was
unable to capture the impact of evapotranspiration in charac­
terizing moisture anomaly conditions over the Indian region.
4.2 Evaluation of meteorological drought indices
The FR values of different indices represent their ability to
detect soil moisture drought using meteorological parameters
alone. Lower (higher) FR values indicate greater (worse) cap­
ability to represent soil moisture drought. In the case of SPI,
the FR values were mainly above 0.8 in parts of eastern as well
as central India, whereas some portions of northwestern India
HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL 1479
and parts of peninsular India had values of 0.6–0.8 (Fig. 4). In
the case of SPEI, the FR values were found to be relatively
lower, i.e. 0.6–0.8, in the majority of the area, with some
isolated patches of higher FR values, i.e. >0.8, over the western
coast and lower FR values, i.e. <0.5, over the northeastern
region. When using MMAI to detect the soil moisture drought,
the FR values were found to be less than 0.2 over the entire
Indian mainland except for some parts of northeastern India.
In the case of SEI, the FR values were much lower than those
for SPI and SPEI, i.e. <0.2 to 0.3, representing soil moisture
droughts with better accuracy than SPI or SPEI (Fig. 4).
However, FR values of >0.6 were also observed in some parts
of northeastern India. Hence, based on FR values, MMAI was
found to be best suited for detecting soil moisture drought
incidents, followed by SEI.
Similar to FR, lower FAR values indicate a better ability of
the indices to represent soil moisture drought conditions.
Figure 5 shows that according to FAR also, the performances
of SPI and SPEI were poorer among the four selected meteor­
ological drought indices. The values mainly ranged from 0.6 to
1480 P. K. DAS ET AL.
Figure 4. Maps of the failure rate of (a) SPI, (b) SPEI, (c) MMAI and (d) SEI in detecting soil moisture drought.
>0.8, with some lower FAR values mainly confined to northern
and peninsular India. In the case of MMAI, the FAR values
were found to be lower than those for SPI and SPEI; however,
the distribution of patches of higher and lower FAR values was
almost identical to that of SPI and SPEI (Fig. 5). In contrast to
the FR results, the FAR values for SEI indicated it outper­
formed MMAI in representing soil moisture drought. The
values mainly varied between <0.2 to 0.3, indicating fewer
overestimations of soil moisture drought incidences in com­
parison to the other indices.
According to Halwatura et al. (2017), the aim is to achieve
lower FR and FAR rates for meteorological indices to detect
the soil moisture drought incidences. In the present study,
based on the analysis of both FR and FAR values, it was
inferred that SPI and SPEI were unable to detect all of the
soil moisture drought occurrences – which were as high as 80%
of the total incidences. Moreover, the SPI and SPEI detected
some drought events that were not actually drought incidences
based on SSMI values. The overestimations were on the order
of 60–80% of the total estimations. The FR and FAR values for
SPI corroborate the findings of Halwatura et al. (2017). It
is interesting that MMAI was found to be the most efficient
in detecting soil moisture drought incidences with more than
80% accuracy; however, it overestimates drought conditions
on the order of 50–80%. On the other hand, the SEI could
identify soil moisture drought occurrences very efficiently,
with both FR and FAR values of less than 30% over major
parts of the Indian mainland. Hence, for detecting soil moist­
ure drought incidences using meteorological parameters alone,
SEI was found to be the most efficient, followed by MMAI.
The false prediction of soil moisture drought events, i.e.
overestimating the drought frequency, remains the major con­
cern for using meteorological indices (Touchan et al. 2005,
Törnros and Menzel 2014). An extreme rainfall deficit and
high potential evapotranspiration (PET) are generally preva­
lent over transition climate regions between wet and dry cli­
mates, such as the Indian region, where the land-atmospheric
interactions have a major impact on soil moisture droughts
(Seneviratne et al. 2006, Seneviratne 2012). However, over­
simplification of the land-atmosphere interactions may be

Figure 5. Maps of the false alarm rate of (a) SPI, (b) SPEI, (c) MMAI and (d) SEI in detecting soil moisture drought.
one reason for the underperformance of SPI and SPEI (Shiau
2006, Seneviratne 2012). The soil type specific to a site has
immense importance in governing the soil moisture drought
phenomenon (Wang et al. 2015). Unlike SPEI, MMAI is devel­
oped by optimizing the interactions between precipitation and
PET in an individual grid over the entire study region (Das
et al. 2017). The better performance of SEI, on the other hand,
can perhaps be attributed to the stronger and linear influence
of PET on the soil moisture minima over the region (Khalili
et al. 2011, Asadi Zarch et al. 2015, Halwatura et al. 2017).
4.3 Performances of meteorological drought indices for
representing combined drought conditions
Generally, different kinds of droughts – meteorological, soil
moisture, agricultural and hydrological droughts – occur in
a sequence. However, one kind of drought does not necessarily
transform into another, based on the resilience or buffering
capacity of the systems. Hence, although these kinds of
droughts are interdependent, the occurrences of one kind of
drought are independent. Likewise, in the present study
HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL 1481
meteorological and soil moisture droughts may occur simulta­
neously, or only one may occur in a given season or year. The
concept of combined or cumulative drought was proposed to
address the overall drought occurrences, i.e. either meteorolo­
gical (SPI < −1) or soil moisture drought (SSMI < −1). Hao and
AghaKouchak (2013) proposed a multivariate standardized
drought index (MSDI) for characterizing combined drought
conditions, by coupling SPI and SSMI.
In the present study, the combined drought occurrences
were estimated by considering a union of meteorological and
soil moisture droughts – that is, a drought was considered
a combined drought if it was either a meteorological or a soil
moisture drought. The combined drought conditions were
analysed to address the overestimations of soil moisture
drought incidences by different meteorological indices.
Subsequently, the FR and FAR values were estimated for all
the meteorological drought indices to evaluate their capability
in retrieving combined drought information.
Similar to soil moisture drought, both the SPI and SPEI
were unable to detect the combined drought conditions; they
produced FR values of more than 60% in most parts of India
1482 P. K. DAS ET AL.

(Fig. 6). In contrast to our earlier finding that SEI was capable
of representing soil moisture drought, SEI failed to detect
combined drought in more than 50% cases over almost the
entire Indian region. In the case of combined drought condi­
tions, meteorological drought is contributing along with soil
moisture drought. In meteorological drought, although evapo­
transpiration has a role to play, precipitation makes a greater
contribution. In SEI computation, the direct precipitation
component is missing. Hence SEI was unable to represent
meteorological drought or the combined drought very effi­
ciently, as it could perform only in the case of soil moisture
drought events.
However, it was observed that MMAI could successfully
capture the combined drought conditions with an accuracy of
generally more than 80% (Fig. 6). Unlike soil moisture
drought, the FAR values for MMAI were found to be very
low, signifying that there was hardly any overestimation of
combined drought conditions (Fig. 7). In the case of MMAI
computation, both the evapotranspiration and the precipita­
tion were used. Hence, MMAI was able to represent the
combined drought more efficiently compared to other Figure 7. Maps of the false alarm rate of MMAI in detecting combined drought
indices. events, i.e. meteorological or/and soil moisture drought.

Figure 6. Maps of the failure rate of (a) SPI, (b) SPEI, (c) MMAI and (d) SEI in detecting combined drought events, i.e. meteorological or/and soil moisture drought.

Drought is considered a multivariate compound event,
which generally develops due to the joint dependent concur­
rence of different extreme events, such as precipitation, PET,
etc. (Leonard et al. 2014, Bevacqua 2017, Manning et al. 2018).
According to Hao and AghaKouchak (2013), information on
different variables, such as precipitation and PET, is important
for proper characterization of drought. The present study
demonstrates that compound drought events, combining
extremes of precipitation, evapotranspiration and soil moist­
ure, can be successfully detected by MMAI. The findings are in
line with a previous study carried out by Das et al. (2017), in
which the improved efficiency of MMAI over other drought
indices in capturing the impact of both rainfall and PET for
characterizing drought events was established.
4.4 Lag-adjustments of different meteorological indices
with respect to time-series SSMI
The temporal adjustments of four meteorological indices were
carried out based on their maximum correlation coefficient
values for a window of −5 to +5 months with respect to SSMI.
Figure 8. Lag (month) of time-series (a) SPI, (b) SPEI, (c) MMAI and (d) SEI with respect to SSMI.
HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL 1483
It was observed that the maximum agreement with SSMI, in
terms of correlation coefficients, was achieved by adjusting the
lag by 1–2 months for different indices (Fig. 8). In the case of
SPI, a 2-month lag was observed over major parts of the Indian
region, whereas for the other three indices only a 1-month lag
was seen, except in the northeastern region where 2–3 months’
lag was observed.
The spatial correlation, FR and FAR were estimated using
lag-adjusted meteorological drought indices to evaluate their
potential in representing both soil moisture and combined
drought conditions. It was observed that the spatial correlation
increased in both SPI and SPEI by around 10%, but this was
mainly confined to the grids with correlation coefficients of 0.5
to 0.7. In grids with higher correlation coefficients, along with
SEI and MMAI, hardly any differences were observed (figure
not shown). Interestingly, there was also no significant
improvement in the FR and FAR values after adopting the lag-
adjusted indices.
Hence, it can be inferred that the temporal adjustments
could increase the spatial correlation of some indices with
SSMI over some selected parts of the Indian region; however,
1484 P. K. DAS ET AL.
the performances of the meteorological drought indices in
representing the soil and combined drought conditions remain
virtually unaltered. The lag analysis confirmed that the
response lag between SPI/SPEI and SSMI may not be the
reason for its underperformance when representing the soil
moisture drought events.
4.5 Zone-wise performances of meteorological drought
indices
The web plot in Fig. 9 shows the performances of the meteor­
ological drought indices over different homogeneous
Figure 9. Zone-wise correlation curves between SSMI and (a) SPI, (b) SPEI, (c) MMAI and (d) SEI for both non-adjusted and lag-adjusted datasets.
meteorological zones for both non-adjusted and lag-adjusted
datasets. Among the different zones, northeastern India
showed relatively lower correlation values with SSMI for all
the meteorological indices, whereas after adjusting the lag the
differences were negligible. The performances of all indices
were comparable in the other three zones, i.e. northwestern,
central and peninsular India, in both non-adjusted and lag-
adjusted indices. Interestingly, the correlation values increased
for SPI and SPEI after lag adjustments in all zones, but this
change was not significant for MMAI or SEI. These observa­
tions corroborate our findings discussed in Section 4.4.
 HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL 1485

Table 1. Zone-wise failure rate and false alarm rate of different meteorological drought indices for representing soil moisture drought and combined drought events.
Zones SPI SPEI SEI MMAI
FR_sm FAR_sm FR_cd FR_sm FAR_sm FR_cd FR_sm FAR_sm FR_cd FR_sm FAR_sm FR_cd FAR_cd
NE 0.78 0.72 0.73 0.68 0.68 0.67 0.41 0.40 0.61 0.16 0.63 0.24 −0.07
NW 0.70 0.66 0.69 0.62 0.64 0.69 0.26 0.28 0.59 0.07 0.58 0.19 −0.03
Central 0.88 0.85 0.72 0.80 0.79 0.70 0.16 0.17 0.58 0.04 0.62 0.16 −0.15
Peninsular 0.75 0.71 0.70 0.68 0.69 0.68 0.22 0.24 0.58 0.07 0.58 0.20 −0.03
Lag-adjusted
NE 0.68 0.71 0.74 0.95 0.65 0.67 0.37 0.32 0.60 0.01 0.60 0.22 −0.04
NW 0.69 0.64 0.69 0.97 0.61 0.68 0.38 0.30 0.59 0.02 0.59 0.21 −0.04
Central 0.69 0.80 0.72 0.95 0.75 0.70 0.24 0.17 0.58 0.02 0.61 0.20 −0.02
Peninsular 0.54 0.66 0.70 0.94 0.64 0.68 0.30 0.26 0.59 0.01 0.58 0.23 −0.04
FR: Failure rate; FAR: False alarm rate; sm: soil moisture drought; cd: combined drought.

The zone-wise mean FR and FAR statistics for both soil
moisture drought and combined drought are presented in
Table 1. The results agree with our earlier findings that the
FR values were lowest in MMAI when representing both kinds
of droughts, i.e. soil moisture drought and combined drought;
however, it overestimated the soil moisture drought. Hence,
SEI was selected as the best meteorological index for represent­
ing soil moisture drought, based on its lower FR and FAR
values. But in the case of combined drought conditions, the
MMAI outperformed all other indices, with the lowest FR and
negligible FAR values in all four meteorological zones. The
trends were similar in the non-adjusted and lag-adjusted
datasets.
improved, no significant improvements in the performances
of all indices were observed based on FR and FAR values.
The zone-wise correlation results corroborated the earlier
findings.
Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to Dr Santanu Chowdhury, Dr Uday Raj and
Dr D. Dutta for their continuous support and encouragement during the
investigation. We also acknowledge the support received from BITS,
Mesra and RRSC-East staffs during manuscript preparation. We duly
acknowledge NASA GMAO for providing long-term MERRA-2 data.
The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their construc­
tive suggestions.

5 Conclusions Disclosure statement

In the present study, the performances of multiscalar meteor­
ological drought indices in detecting soil moisture drought
conditions were evaluated. The spatial correlations of SPI
and SPEI with SSMI were found to be lower, i.e. 0.5 to 0.7,
over major parts of the Indian mainland, whereas correlation
coefficients were highest for SEI, i.e. >0.9, in most areas (except
some isolated parts of northeastern India). For MMAI, the
correlation coefficient values were slightly lower (>0.8) than
for SEI; however, they were significantly higher than those for
both SPI and SPEI. It was interesting to find that SPI and SPEI
displayed almost identical behaviour, along with similar lower
and higher correlation patches.
In terms of the multivariate meteorological drought
indices’ performance in representing soil moisture drought
based on FR and FAR, both SPI and SPEI failed, with FR and
FAR values >80% in major parts of the Indian region. In the
case of MMAI, although the FR values were the lowest
among the indices, the FAR values were much higher, indi­
cating overestimation of soil moisture drought events.
Hence, SEI was selected as the best index to detect soil
moisture drought, based on its lower FR and FAR values.
However, the MMAI was found to outperform the other
indices in simulating the combined drought events, i.e. either
meteorological or soil moisture drought events. Thus, we
conclude that SEI may be used to detect soil moisture
drought, whereas MMAI would be a better choice for repre­
senting combined drought events. The time-series lags in the
indices with respect to SSMI were adjusted, and we found
that although the spatial correlations of SPI and SPEI were
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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