Drought is a type of destructive hydro-climatic disaster that has a significant impact on agriculture and natural resources. Meteorological drought features, including severity, duration, and peak, exhibit various patterns in different climatic regions and geographical conditions. Several indices have been developed to assess the drought potential of different areas across the world, among which the drought hazard index (DHI) is one of the most commonly employed for semi-arid and the flat regions. This study investigates the effects of the elevation and precipitation on DHI, which has received little attention in previous studies. For this purpose, DHIs were computed for 15 stations located at different elevations of the study area over 31 years by considering the occurrence of various drought classes with different weights. The results showed that the elevation and mean precipitation both have inverse effects on the DHI in the study area, which means that the DHI increases when the elevation and mean precipitation are low. The results of the estimation of the DHI for three different periods (i.e., 6, 9, and 12 months) revealed that a 9-month period is optimum for DHI estimations in terms of the reliability of the results.

干旱是一种破坏性的水文气候灾害，对农业和自然资源产生重大影响。气象干旱特征，包括严重程度，持续时间和峰值，在不同的气候区域和地理条件下表现出各种模式。已经开发了一些指数来评估全球不同地区的干旱潜力，其中干旱风险指数（DHI）是半干旱和平坦地区最常用的指标之一。这项研究调查了海拔和降水对DHI的影响，这在以前的研究中很少受到关注。为此，在31年中，考虑了不同权重的各种干旱类别的发生，对位于研究区域不同海拔的15个台站计算了DHI。结果表明，海拔高度和平均降水量对研究区的DHI均具有反作用，这意味着当海拔高度和平均降水量较低时，DHI会增加。在三个不同时期（即6、9和12个月）的DHI估算结果表明，就结果的可靠性而言，对于DHI估算而言，9个月为最佳。