News Summary

• This study proposes an Index-fusion-based framework for hybrid drought modeling in the Marun basin, Iran.
• Multiple standard drought indices based on precipitation, inflow, reservoir storage, and discharge data are combined.
• Three Individual Artificial Intelligence (IAI) models, including Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Regression (SVR), and Random Forest (RF), are used to predict the HDIs.
• The results suggest an increased risk of drought under the high-emission SSP5.85 scenario.