Climate change will increase the intensity of future droughts in India, which will have a negative impact on crop production, demand for irrigation will increase and exploitation of groundwater will increase,  says a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar

According to the researchers, due to the rapid decrease in soil moisture, the intensity of sudden drought will increase. He said that a sudden drought could affect a large area in two to three weeks as compared to the traditional drought, this would have a very bad effect on the crop and the demand for water for irrigation would increase.

This study is published in the NPJ Climate Journal. It examines the role of human-caused climate change in the drought that occurs during the monsoon. The researchers used soil samples and climate estimates collected by the India Meteorological Department in their study.

The researchers used soil moisture simulations, observations from India Meteorological Department (IMD), and climate projections to examine the frequency of flash droughts in the country under the observed and future climate scenarios. The team noted that the worst flash drought in the observed timeframe from 1951–2016 occurred in 1979, when more than 40 percent of the country was affected.

The frequency of concurrent hot and dry extremes, the researchers explained, is projected to rise by about five-fold, causing an approximately sevenfold increase in flash droughts like 1979 by the end of the 21st century. "We find that flash droughts in India are caused by the monsoon breaks or delayed monsoon and the number of flash droughts will increase in the future," said Vimal Mishra, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar.

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