Basic reporting I provide my opinion in comments. Experimental design I provide my opinion in comments. Validity of the findings I provide my opinion in comments. Comments for the Author Dear Authors The subject addressed is within the scope of the journal; however, the manuscript, in its present form, contains several weaknesses. Appropriate revisions to the following points should be undertaken to justify the recommendation for publication. So, I suggest that this manuscript should be revised as major revision.

Abstract 1- L16: change “di฀cult” to “difficult” 2- It would be better to highlight your contribution, more clearly in the abstract. 3- It would be better to provide quantitative results in this section. Introduction 4- L33: change “effects” to “causes”. 5- L35-38: Rewrite the sentences. 6- L88: change “e฀cient” to “efficient”. 7- The authors should highlight the research significantly, more clearly in the introduction section. 8- There are some grammatical errors in this section. Please check whole the section carefully. 9- References are not always relevant and up-to-date. This reviewer suggests the inclusion of a few relevant publications. The list is given below: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/joc.6307https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-019-02979-6https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168192319302199 Materials and methods 10- It is mentioned in L110 that four meteorological stations of Pakistan (Multan, Bahawalpur, Barkhan, and Khanpur) are adopted. What are other feasible alternatives? What are the advantages of adopting this particular case study over others in this case? How will this affect the results? The authors should provide more details on this 11- Add a table to describe the station's details like longitude, latitude, altitude, ….. 12- Why the authors used the SPI among several other drought indices? Please justify. 13- L219: Change “di฀erent” to “different ”. 14- The authors used only the error indices to measure the model's performance, the similarity indices (i.e., R, NSE, WI,…) should be used as well. Results 15- L331: Solve the errors typing 16- To provide a better perspective, authors should generate the other graphical performance presentation like scatter plot, Taylor diagram, relative error plot, Heat map Conclusion 17- In the conclusion section, the limitations of this study suggested improvements in this work, and future directions should be highlighted.

Comments for the Author I suggest accepting the revised paper for possible publication.