Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Temporal and spatial variability of drought in Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin, China

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Drought is a kind of extreme hydrological event. With the penetration of climate change impact, severity, areal extent, and frequency of drought are increasing, especially in Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin, which plays a key role in China’s agriculture production. Analyzing the regional temporal and spatial variability in the context of climate change could provide a basis for the evasion of disasters and risk. The maximum number of consecutive dry days was selected as the indicator to analyze the decadal variability of drought severity, areal extent, and spatial variability of drought frequency in different seasons in Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin. Based on these, temporal and spatial variability of two kinds of special extreme events—consecutive drought and heavy rain after drought—were studied. The results showed that: (1) Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin mainly experienced moderate drought and severe drought. Moderate drought mainly occurs in autumn. High-frequency region of moderate drought is located in the plain of Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin, and its area is approximately 22.7 % of Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin. Severe drought often occurs in spring with high-frequency region in the upstream of the Yellow River. The area of this high-frequency region is about 6 % of Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin. (2) During 1961~2011, the areal extent of summer severe drought, autumn severe drought, and extreme drought all showed increasing trend, in which the increasing trend of the autumn severe drought area in the Yellow River has reached the significance level α = 0.05. (3) Consecutive drought of several seasons often took place in Ningxia plain and Hetao plain which lie in the northwest of the Yellow River Basin. In the recent 20 years, consecutive drought from spring to summer and consecutive drought from summer to autumn occurred frequently. Drought-flood abrupt alternation such as heavy rain after drought often occurred in summer temporally and Huaihe River Basin spatially.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Akritas MG, Murphy SA, Lavalley MP (1995) The Theil-Sen estimator with doubly censored data and applications to astronomy. J Am Stat Assoc 90:170–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alley WM (1984) The Palmer Drought Severity Index: limitations and assumptions. J Appl Meteorol Climatol 23(7):1100–1109

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashok KM, Vijay PS (2011) Drought modeling—a review. J Hydrol 403:157–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Assad ED, Sano EE, Masutomo R, de Castro LHR, da Silva FAM (1993) Veranicos na região dos cerrados brasileiros frequência e probabilidade de ocorrência. Pesq Agrop Brasileira 28(9):993–1003

    Google Scholar 

  • Chi ZP (2009) Spatial and temporal distributions and climate change of summer precipitation in Shandong province. Plateau Meteorol 28(1):220–226 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark JM, Heinemeyer A, Martin P, Bottrell SH (2012) Processes controlling DOC in pore water during simulated drought cycles in six different UK peats. Biogeochemistry 109(1–3):253–270

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dai A (2011) Drought under global warming: a review. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Chang 2(1):45–65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delpla I, Jung AV, Baures E, Clement M, Thomas O (2009) Impacts of climate change on surface water quality in relation to drinking water production. Environ Int 35(8):1225–1233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frich P, Alexander LV, Della-Marta P, Gleason B, Haylock M, Klein TAM, Peterson T (2002) Observed coherent changes in climatic extremes during the second half of the twentieth century. Clim Res 19(3):193–212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garcia M, Peters-Lidard CD, Goodrich DC (2008) Spatial interpolation of precipitation in a dense gauge network for monsoon storm events in the southwestern United States. Water Resour Res 44:W05S13

    Google Scholar 

  • Guo J, Ren GY (2005) Recent change of pan evaporation and possible climate factors over the Huang-Huai-Hai watershed, China. Adv Water Sci 16(5):666–672 (in Chinese)

  • Guttman NB (1998) Comparing the Palmer Drought Index and the Standardized Precipitation Index. J Am Water Resour Assoc 34(1):113–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hua T, Wang XM, Zhang CX, Lang LL (2013) Temporal and spatial variations in the Palmer Drought Severity Index over the past four centuries in arid, semiarid, and semihumid East Asia. Chin Sci Bull 58(33):4143–4152

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huang RH, Cai R, Chen J, Zhou L (2006) Interdecaldal variations of drought and flooding disasters in china and their association with the East Asian climate system. Chin J Atmos Sci 30(5):730–743 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Huo ZG, Li SK (1993) Climate resources of China. Science Popularization Press (in Chinese)

  • Jin SB (1992) Wheat ecological theory and applications. Zhejiang Science and Technology Press, Hangzhou (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Keyantash J, Dracup JA (2002) The quantification of drought: an evaluation of drought indices. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 83:1167–1180

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laxmi S, Naveed K, René L (2010) Dry spell characteristics over Canada in a changing climate as simulated by the Canadian RCM. Glob Planet Chang 74:1–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li L, Xu LL, Fang J (2009) Three kind of meteorological drought classification method comparison and improvement. Chin J Agrometeorology 30(2):310–312

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu M, Wu JJ, Lv AF, Zhao L, He B (2010) The water stress of winter wheat in Huang-Huai-Hai plain of China under rain-fed condition. Prog Geogr 29(4):427–432 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Loukas A, Vasiliades L (2004) Probabilistic analysis of drought spatiotemporal characteristics in Thessaly region, Greece. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 4:719–731

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lu H, Zhang XY, Liu SD (2012) Risk assessment to China’s agricultural drought disaster in county unit. Nat Hazards 61:1–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma ZG, Fu CB, Xie L, Chen WH, Tao SW (2001) Some problems in the study on the relationship between soil moisture and climatic change. Adv Earth Sci 16(4):563–568 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales, Preprints. 8th Conference on Applied Climatology 179–184

  • Milan G, Slavisa T (2014) Spatiotemporal characteristics of drought in Serbia. J Hydrol 510:110–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell G, McDonald AT (1992) Discoloration of water by peat following induced drought and rainfall simulation. Water Res 26:321–326

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought. Research paper No. 45. United States Department of Commerce. Weather Bureau, Washington

    Google Scholar 

  • Qin DH, Ding YH, Su JL, Qin DH, Ding YH, Su JL, Ren JW, Wang SW, Wu RS, Yang XQ, Wang SM, Liu SY, Dong GR, Lu Q, Huang ZG, Du B, Luo Y et al (2006) Assessment of climate and environment changes in China (i): Climate and environment changes in China and their projection. Adv Clim Chang Res 2:1–5 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rasoul M, Emmanouil NA, Ahmad FF, Yagob D, Saeid E (2013) Analysis of meteorological drought in northwest Iran using the Joint Deficit Index. J Hydrol 492:35–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shen FX, Geng LH, Qin FX, Xu PB (2002) Analysis of water saving in received area in Huanghe-Huaihe-Haihe watersheds and Eastern and Middle Lines of water transferring project from South to North, China. AdvWater Sci 13(6):768–774 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tagel G, Anne VDV, Ben M (2011) Spatial and temporal assessment of drought in the Northern highlands of Ethiopia. Int J Appl Earth Obs Geoinformation 3:309–321

    Google Scholar 

  • Tammets T, Jaagus J (2013) Climatology of precipitation extremes in Estonia using the method of moving precipitation totals. Theor Appl Climatol 111(3–4):623–639

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viste E, Korecha D, Sorteberg A (2013) Recent drought and precipitation tendencies in Ethiopia. Theor Appl Climatol 112(3–4):535–551

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang L, Chen W (2014) Applicability analysis of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index in drought monitoring in China. Plateau Meteorol 33(2):423–431 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Yu SP, Yang JS, Liu GM, Yao RJ, Wang XP (2012) Multiple time scale characteristics of rainfall and its impact on soil salinization in the typical easily salinized area in Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, China. Stoch Env Res Risk A 26(7):983–992

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yuan WP, Zhou GS (2004) Theoretical study and research prospect on drought indices. Adv Earth Sci 19(6):982–991 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang BQ, Wu PT, Zhao XN, Wang YB, Wang JW, Shi YG (2012) Drought variation trends in different subregions of the Chinese loess plateau over the past four decades. Agric Water Manag 115:167–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China “Influence Mechanism and Water Resources Security Evaluation of the Water Cycle of Huanghuaihai Region under the Impact of Climate Change” (Grant No.: 2010CB951102) and General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 51279207).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, 1-A Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100038, People’s Republic of China

    Zhe Yuan, Deng-Hua Yan, Zhi-Yong Yang, Jun Yin & Yong Yuan

Authors
  1. Zhe Yuan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Deng-Hua Yan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Zhi-Yong Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jun Yin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Yong Yuan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Deng-Hua Yan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yuan, Z., Yan, DH., Yang, ZY. et al. Temporal and spatial variability of drought in Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin, China. Theor Appl Climatol 122, 755–769 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1332-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1332-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation