Assessment of Meteorological Drought under the Climate Change in the Kabul River Basin, Afghanistan

Kabul River Basin is one of the most significant river basins in Afghanistan from a socio-economic perspective. Since country located an arid climate zone with drastically varying climatic behavior, effective assessment meteorological drought very essential to managing limited availability water resources. For this endeavor, outputs three general circulation models under two representative concentration pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) were used against baseline period 1961–1980. Different bias correction methods applied, results show that delta change method, quantile mapping empirical all performed better for precipitation, maximum temperature, minimum temperature datasets, respectively. The ERA5-Land datasets WorldClim Version 2 are validate bias-corrected precipitation respectively, determine their dependability, found be promising. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Reconnaissance Drought (RDI), Deciles (DI), New (NDI) assess condition past forecast future periods 2020s, 2050s, 2080s. spatial distribution assessed indices was mapped using inverse distance weighting (IDW) method. Our revealed moderate extreme droughts consistent across entire basin. This might because projected annual basin shows decline 53–65% up end century (2100), average increase by 1.8 °C, 3.5 4.8 Furthermore, estimated SPI RDI scenarios almost same, whereas NDI estimates frequent events after 2050s. However, drought, RDI, which includes effects evapotranspiration, far greater than both scenarios, considering also larger number years, strengthening possibility its occurrence A regional comparison indicates decrease periods, predominantly high altitudes.