Comparative study of different exponential smoothing models in simulation of meteorological drought : A study on Purulia district, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Drought is a burning issue in India and hence needs serious attention of researchers to develop rigorous plan and management. Areas that belong to various plateaus, e.g., Chottanagpur plateau, Deccan plateau, etc., are mostly affected by drought in India. In the past decade, Purulia District of West Bengal, which belongs to northeast part of Chottanagpur plateau, faced severe drought several times. But the assessment of drought in this area was far from a decesive proclamation till date. In this research, an attempt was made to compare the Holt-Winter additive and Holt-Winter multiplicative model in simulation (at 1 month lead time) of meteorological drought (using Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) of Purulia District, West Bengal, India. The additive model showed better performance than the multiplicative model with minimized Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and higher correlation coefficient value (R²). The spatial assessment drought at pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon phase indicated that severe drought had occurred in post monsoon and premonsoon phase at the eastern portions of the study area.