Confidential Manuscript Submitted to Geophysical Research Letters 1
Confidential manuscript submitted to Geophysical Research Letters 1 Drought and famine in India , 1870 - 2016 2 3 Vimal Mishra 1 , Amar Deep Tiwari 1 , Reepal Shah 1 , Mu Xiao 2 , D.S. Pai 3 , Dennis Lettenmaier 2 4 5 1. Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India 6 2. Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, USA 7 3. India Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune 8 9 Abstract 10 11 Millions of people died due to famines caused by droughts and crop failures in India in the 19 th and 12 20 th centuries . However, the relationship of historical famines with drought is complic ated and not 13 well understood in the context of the 19 th and 20 th - century events. Using station - based observations 14 and simulations from a hydrological model, we reconstruct soil moisture ( agricultural ) drought in 15 India for the period 1870 - 2016. We show that over this century and a half period , India experienced 16 seven major drought periods (1876 - 1882, 1895 - 1900, 1908 - 1924, 1937 - 1945, 1982 - 1990, 1997 - 17 2004, and 2011 - 2015) based on severity - area - duration (SAD) analysis of reconstructed soil 18 moisture. Out of six major famines (1873 - 74, 1876, 1877, 1896 - 97, 1899, and 1943) that occurred 19 during 1870 - 2016 , five are linked to soil moisture drought , and one (1943) was not. On the other 20 hand, five major droughts were not linked with famine, and three of tho se five non - famine droughts 21 occurred after Indian Independence in 1947. Famine deaths due to droughts have been significantly 22 reduced in modern India , h owever, ongoing groundwater storage depletion has the potential to 23 cause a shift back to recurrent famines .
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