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Change of summer drought over China during 1961–2020 based on standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index

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Abstract

With the aggravation of climate change, drought has become a more prominent extreme event with serious consequences. The selection of drought indices is crucial for accurate quantification and assessment of drought change and its impacts. In this study, we first evaluated the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at different time scales in terms of their applicability to reflect changes in summer drought over China through comparison with observation-based drought indices including soil moisture (SM) dataset. We found that precipitation and SM both exhibit a drying feature from northeastern China to southwestern China. At different time scales, the 1-month SPEI (SPEI-01) has the best performance in reflecting the changes of summer SM over China. Using SPEI-01, we examined the spatial pattern of change in drought intensity and frequency from 1961 to 2020 in China at a national scale and further compared drought change in regions with different aridities. Overall, China witnessed a wetting trend in the past 60 years. Arid and semiarid regions were featured with “dryer in the east and wetter in the west.” A drying trend was found in the southeast of the Tibetan Plateau and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In humid regions, drought relieved in the Yangtze River Delta but worsened in the southwest of China. Changes in drought frequency and intensity also exhibited remarkable spatial heterogeneity. Our results can contribute to a better understanding of the spatial-temporal variations of drought severity for climate change adaptation.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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The code is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42105160).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather and Institute of Global Change and Polar Meteorology, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Chenpeng Wang, Mengtian Huang, Panmao Zhai & Rong Yu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Chenpeng Wang

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MH and PZ conceived the project idea. MH, CW, and PZ designed this study. CW performed the analysis and wrote the first draft. MH edited and revised the manuscript. RY contributed to the interpretation of the results. All authors participated in the discussion of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mengtian Huang.

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Wang, C., Huang, M., Zhai, P. et al. Change of summer drought over China during 1961–2020 based on standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. Theor Appl Climatol 153, 297–309 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04471-8

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