Climate-catchment-soil control on hydrological droughts in peninsular India

Most land surface system models and observational assessments ignore detailed soil characteristics while describing the drought attributes such as growth, duration, recovery, and the termination rate of the event. With the national-scale digital soil maps available for India, we assessed the climate-catchment-soil nexus using daily observed streamflow records from 98 sites in tropical rain-dominated catchments of peninsular India (8–25° N, 72–86° E). Results indicated that climate-catchment-soil properties may control hydrological drought attributes to the tune of 14–70%. While terrain features are dominant drivers for drought growth, contributing around 50% variability, soil attributes contribute ~ 71.5% variability in drought duration. Finally, soil and climatic factors together control the resilience and termination rate. The most relevant climate characteristics are potential evapotranspiration, soil moisture, rainfall, and temperature; temperature and soil moisture are dominant controls for streamflow drought resilience. Among different soil properties, soil organic carbon (SOC) stock could resist drought propagation, despite low-carbon soils across the Indian subcontinent. The findings highlight the need for accounting feedback among climate, soil, and topographical properties in catchment-scale drought propagations.