Spatial and temporal pattern of precipitation and drought in Gansu Province, Northwest China (original) (raw)

Temporal and spatial characteristics of precipitation and droughts in the upper reaches of the Yangtze river basin (China) in recent five decades

Journal of Hydroinformatics, 2012

Drought is one of the most harmful natural hazards in the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River basin (URYR) in the mid-west part of China. Alterations in precipitation will affect the severity of drought. The nonparametric Mann–Kendall (MK) test was used in this paper to examine the trend of precipitation and the standardized precipitation index (SPI) was adopted to analyze the spatial–temporal variations of meteorological drought over different time scales in the last 50 years. The MK test value of precipitation indicated that, for most of the URYR showed an increasing trend of precipitation in the months of January, February, March and June, mainly in the Min-Tuojiang, Jialingjiang and Wujiang sub-basins and a decreasing trend was observed in August to December. The most obvious decreasing trend of precipitation occurred in the Jialingjiang, upper mainstream and Wujiang sub-basins in September, with a rate ranging from –7.89mm/10 years to –39.36mm/10 years. The results show that the...

Rainfall and drought variability in spatial and temporal context in Lop Nor region, South Xinjiang, China, during 1981–2018

Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 2020

Rainfall is one of the fundamental physical parameters among the climate, which determines the environmental factors as well as the meteorological drought for a particular region. Drought is one of the most important and major natural hazards which might lead to consequences like poverty and hunger. This study analyzes rainfall variability and drought assessment spatially and temporally in the Lop Nor region, South Xinjiang, China, using Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). For this purpose, various indices such as kurtosis, skewness, and standard deviation were calculated from annual rainfall data (1981-2018) of seven meteorological stations. For trend detection, the Mann-Kendall test was applied to both 12-month and 1-month SPIs. The highest variability was found in Yuli, Ruoqiang, and Tieganlike met-stations. The 12-month SPI results revealed extreme dry periods in the study region from 2007 to 2008, and the moderate drought was observed from 2009 to 2013. The results of the Mann-Kendall trend test for 1-month SPI indicates a more significant trend (positive) in Tieganlike and Ruoqiang, while there are fluctuations in the results of other meteorological stations. In the month of March, almost all the met-stations were found driest as the tau (τ) values were found negative in all stations. The results of 12-month SPI indicate the drying conditions in Yuli and Turpan while the wetting conditions prevailed in the remaining meteorological stations in the region.

Elucidating Diverse Drought Characteristics from Two Meteorological Drought Indices (SPI and SPEI) in China

Journal of Hydrometeorology, 2020

This study elucidates drought characteristics in China during 1980–2015 using two commonly used meteorological drought indices: standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation–evapotranspiration index (SPEI). The results show that SPEI characterizes an overall increase in drought severity, area, and frequency during 1998–2015 compared with those during 1980–97, mainly due to the increasing potential evapotranspiration. By contrast, SPI does not reveal this phenomenon since precipitation does not exhibit a significant change overall. We further identify individual drought events using the three-dimensional (i.e., longitude, latitude, and time) clustering algorithm and apply the severity–area–duration (SAD) method to examine the drought spatiotemporal dynamics. Compared to SPI, SPEI identifies a lower drought frequency but with larger total drought areas overall. Additionally, SPEI identifies a greater number of severe drought events but a smaller number of sligh...

The alleviating trend of drought in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain of China based on the daily SPEI

International Journal of Climatology, 2015

Drought is a major natural hazard that can have devastating impacts on regional agriculture, water resources and the environment. To assess the variability and pattern of drought characteristics in the Huang-Huai-Hai (HHH) Plain, the daily Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is developed based on daily meteorological data in this study. The daily SPEI data are used, including Annual Total Drought Severity (ATDS), Annual Total Drought Duration (ATDD) and Annual Drought Frequency (ADF), which were calculated from 1981 to 2010 at 28 meteorological stations. We used the indices (ATDS, ATDD and ADF), Hovmöller diagrams and the reliable no parameter statistical methods of the Mann-Kendall test to assess the variability and pattern of drought characteristics for the period from 1981 to 2010 in the HHH plain. The results suggested that severe drought occurred in the 1980s, the late 1990s and the early 2000s, severe drought events occurred in 1981, 1986, 1997 and 2002. Decreasing trends for both ATDS and ATDD were found, and the drought situation did not worsen under global warming during the past 30 years, and the drought situation is alleviating in the entire HHH plain. The northeast and southwest regions of the HHH plain have suffered from more severe drought, and the north region is prone to drought. The results of the study can provide a scientific understanding for the adoption of countermeasures of regional defence against drought and also may serve as a reference point for drought hazard vulnerability analysis.

Spatiotemporal variability and assessment of drought in the Wei River basin of China

Proceedings of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences

The temporal and spatial variations of drought in the Wei River basin (WRB) were investigated by calculating the meteorological drought Index (Standardized Precipitation Index, SPI) and the agricultural drought index (Vegetation Health Index, VHI). Monthly precipitation and air temperature were from 22 meteorological stations over the region from 1960 to 2015. Monthly Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and 8days Land Surface Temperature (LST) were provided from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the period 2000-2015 were also adopted. The results showed that the drought initially increased and then decreased, reaching at the maximum value in 1990s. The spatial pattern of meteorological drought showed that the drought in northern WRB was heavier than that in southern WRB before 1990s, after that, the situation had the opposite. By comparing the agricultural drought index (VHI) with crop yield, it was proved that VHI was applicable in the WRB and could well reflect the fluctuation of agricultural drought. The WRB suffered from serious agricultural drought in 2000, 2001, 2007 and 2008. Through analysis of the historical precipitation and temperature data, it was found that precipitation had a greater contribution to creating agricultural drought conditions than temperature in the Wei River basin.

From meteorological droughts to hydrological droughts: a case study of the Weihe River Basin, China

Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 2019

The standard precipitation index (SPI) and streamflow drought index (SDI) were used in this study to investigate the relationship between meteorological and hydrological droughts in the Weihe River Basin, the largest tributary of the Yellow River-the 6th longest river in the world and the BMother River of China.^Results showed that (1) the frequencies of both meteorological droughts and hydrological droughts have showed an increasing trend in the last 50 years in the Weihe River basin; (2) there was a strong relationship between meteorological and the hydrological droughts, which can be linked with a simple linear function; (3) the relationship between meteorological and the hydrological droughts varied in space and time; and (4) the differences between meteorological and the hydrological droughts have become more significant during the last 50 years. The presented results not only play an important reference in understanding the relationships between meteorological and hydrological droughts, but also have practical applications for regional water resource managements at catchment scale.

Observed changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl River basin, China, using the standardized precipitation index and aridity index

Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2009

Monthly precipitation data of 42 rain stations over the Pearl River basin for 1960-2005 were analyzed to classify anomalously wet and dry conditions by using the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and aridity index (I) for the rainy season (April-September) and winter (December-February). Trends of the number of wet and dry months decided by SPI were detected with Mann-Kendall technique. Furthermore, we also investigated possible causes behind wet and dry variations by analyzing NCAR/NCEP reanalysis dataset. The results indicate that: (1) the Pearl River basin tends to be dryer in the rainy season and comes to be wetter in winter. However, different wetting and drying properties can be identified across the basin: west parts of the basin tend to be dryer; and southeast parts tend to be wetter; (2) the Pearl River basin is dominated by dry tendency in the rainy season and is further substantiated by aridity index (I) variations; and (3) water vapor flux, moisture content changes in the rainy season and winter indicate different influences of moisture changes on wet and dry conditions across the Pearl River basin. Increasing moisture content gives rise to an increasing number of wet months in winter. However, no fixed relationships can be observed between moisture content changes and number of wet months in the rainy season, indicating that more than one factor can influence the dry or wet conditions of the study region. The results of this paper will be helpful for basin-scale water resource management under the changing climate.

Assessing the Drought Variability in Northeast China over Multiple Temporal and Spatial Scales

Atmosphere

Long-term drought variation provides a scientific foundation for water resource planning and drought mitigation. However, the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of drought in northeast China (NEC) are unclear. We conducted a comprehensive assessment of drought status and trends based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in NEC from 1990 until 2018. The findings show that: (1) the drying trend peaked in 2001, and then exhibited a mitigation tendency before drying again after 2013. The implementation of ecological restoration projects is primarily responsible for drought mitigation. (2) The areas with wetting and drying trends in the future would cover 86% and 17% of NEC, respectively. (3) There is a time lag between improved vegetation and the trend shift from dry to wet. (4) Spring and winter revealed wet trends within 71% and 84% of NEC, respectively, showing high sensitivity and resilience to drought, while 92–93% of NEC displayed dry tendencies ...

A Comprehensive Approach to Assess the Hydrological Drought of Inland River Basin in Northwest China

Atmosphere , 2018

How to measure and quantitatively assess hydrological drought (HD) in the inland river basins of Northwest China is a difficult problem because of the complicated geographical environment and climatic processes. To address this problem, we conducted a comprehensive approach and selected the Aksu River Basin (ARB) as a typical inland river basin to quantitatively assess the hydrological drought based on the observed data and reanalysis data during the period of 1980–2010. We used two mutual complementing indicators, i.e., the standardized runoff index (SRI) and standardized terrestrial water storage index (SWSI), to quantitatively measure the spatio-temporal pattern of HD, where the SRI calculated from the observed runoff data indicate the time trend of HD of the whole basin, while SWSI extracted from the reanalysis data indicate the spatial pattern of HD. We also used the auto-regressive distribution lag model (ARDL) to show the autocorrelation of HD and its dependence on precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), and soil moisture. The main conclusions are as follows: (a) the western and eastern regions of the ARB were prone to drought, whereas the frequency of drought in the middle of the ARB is relatively lower; (b) HD presents significant autocorrelation with two months' lag, and soil moisture is correlated with SWSI with two months' lag, whereas PET and precipitation are correlated with SWSI with 1 month' lag; (c) the thresholds of HD for annual PET, annual precipitation, and annual average soil moisture are greater than 844.05 mm, less than 134.52 mm, and less than 411.07 kg/m 2 , respectively. A drought early warning system that is based on the thresholds was designed.