Abstract
Using daily precipitation data from 25 meteorological stations for a period of 1961–2014, spatiotemporal features of wet spells and droughts and related impacts on agricultural production across Anhui province, China, were investigated with a linear regressive technique, the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the modified Mann–Kendall trend test method. Results indicated that: (1) ENSO-induced wet spells and droughts accounted for 83 and 68% of the total wet spells and droughts and droughts were closely related to La Nina events of the same and subsequent years. Wet spells, however, were closely related to El Niño events; (2) a larger variability was found in the SPEI, showing larger flood and drought risks during spring and autumn than those during summer and winter seasons. Generally, wet spells in winter were relatively high and the drying tendency was identified in winter during recent years; (3) relations between SPEI and SSTA were shifting during warm and cold phases of ENSO. The warm phase of ENSO tended to have larger impacts on SPEI in southern Anhui province, and the cold phase of ENSO had a greater impact on the SPEI variation in northern Anhui province. Comparatively, SSTA had an increasing impact on wet spells and droughts with increasing lag time; and (4) the reduction of rice and maize production in southern Anhui province was found mainly during 1 year earlier to the ENSO events. The amount of reduction of maize was larger in northern Anhui province and Jianghuai region, years with maize reduction were more often in southern Anhui province. Irrigation in central Anhui province can mitigate the negative effects of wet spells and droughts.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alan DZ, Justin S, Edwin PM, Bart N, Eric FW, Dennis PL (2003) Detection of intensification in global- and continental-scale hydrological cycles: temporal scale of evaluation. J Clim 16:535–547
Apurv T, Mehrotra R, Sharma A, Goyal MK, Dutta S (2015) Impact of climate change on floods in the Brahmaputra basin using CMIP5 decadal predictions. J Hydrol 527:281–291
Daufresne M, Lengfellner K, Sommer U (2009) Global warming benefits the small in aquatic ecosystems. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106(31):12788–12793
Devereux S (2007) The impact of droughts and floods on food security and policy options to alleviate negative effects. Agric Econ 37:47–58
Douglas I (2009) Climate change, flooding and food security in south Asia. Food Secur 1:127–136
Gershunov A, Barnett TP (1998) ENSO influence on intraseasonal extreme rainfall and temperature frequencies in the contiguous United States: observations and model results. J Clim 11(7):1575–1586
Gershunov A, Cayan DR (2003) Heavy daily precipitation frequency over the contiguous United States: sources of climatic variability and seasonal predictability. J Clim 16(16):2752–2765
Grimm AM, Tedeschi RG (2009) ENSO and extreme rainfall events in South America. J Clim 22(7):1589–1609
Gu X, Zhang Q, Singh VP, Xiao M, Cheng J (2016) Nonstationarity-based evaluation of flood risk in the Pearl River basin: changing patterns, causes and implications. Hydrol Sci J. doi:10.1080/02626667.2016.1183774
Hamed KH, Rao AR (1998) A modified Mann–Kendall trend test for autocorrelated data. J Hydrol 204(1–4):182–196
IPCC (2013) Summary for policymakers. In: Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM (eds) Climate change 2013: the physical science basis, contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York
Kendall MG (1975) Rank correlation methods. Griffin, London
Khedun CP, Mishra AK, Singh VP, Giardino JR (2014) A copula-based precipitation forecasting model: investigating the interdecadal modulation of ENSO’s impacts on monthly precipitation. Water Resour Res 50:580–600
Lan YC, Ma QJ, Kang E, Zhang JS, Zhang ZH (2002) Relationship between ENSO cycle and abundant or low runoff in the upper Yellow River (China). J Desert Res 22(3):262–266
Liang SS, Shen ZC (2000) China agriculture yearbook. Chinese Agriculture Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
MacDonald MG (2010) Water, climate change, and sustainability in the southwest. PNAS 107(50):21256–21262
Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391:202–216
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2011) Drought modeling—a review. J Hydrol 403(1–2):157–175
National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC) (2009) Collections of agricultural statistics of the 30 years of reform and opening in China. Chinese Statistics Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
Ouyang R, Liu W, Fu G, Liu C, Hu L, Wang H (2014) Linkages between ENSO/PDO signals and precipitation, streamflow in China during the last 100 years. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 18:3651–3661
Posthumu H, Hewett CJM, Morris J, Quinn PF (2008) Agricultural land use and flood risk management: engaging with stakeholders in North Yorkshire. Agric Water Manag 95:787–798
Riebsame WE, Changnon SA, Karl TR (1991) Drought and natural resource management in the United States: impacts and implications of the 1987–89 drought. Westview Press, Boulder, p 174
Schmidhuber J, Tubiello NF (2007) Global food security under climate change. PNAS 104(50):19703–19708
Sharma KD (2011) Rain-fed agriculture could meet the challenges of food security in India. Curr Sci 100(11):1615–1616
Smith TM, Reynolds RW, Peterson TC, Lawrimore J (2008) Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis (1880–2006). J Clim 21:2283–2296
Thornthwaite CW (1948) An approach toward a rational classification of climate. Geogr Rev 38(1):55–94
Vicente-Serrano SM, Begueria S, Lopez-Moreno JI (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23(7):1696–1718
von Storch H, Navarra A (eds) (1995) Analysis of climate variability—applications of statistical techniques. Springer, New York, p 334
Webster PJ, Magana VO, Palmer TN, Shukla J, Tomas RA, Yanai M, Yasunari T (1998) Monsoons: processes, predictability, and the prospects for prediction. J Geophys Res 103(C7):14451–14510
Wen KG (2005) Encyclopedia of meteorological disasters in China. Meteorological Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
Xiao M, Zhang Q, Singh VP (2015) Influences of ENSO, NAO, IOD and PDO on seasonal precipitation regimes in the Yangtze River basin, China. Int J Climatol 35(12):3556–3567
Xiao M, Zhang Q, Singh VP (2017) Spatiotemporal variations of extreme precipitation regimes during 1961–2010 and possible teleconnections with climate indices across China. Int J Climatol. doi:10.1002/joc.4719
Yue S, Pilon P, Phinney B, Cavadias G (2002) The influence of autocorrelation on the ability to detect trend in hydrological series. Hydrol Process 16(9):1807–1829
Zhang RH, Sumi A, Kimoto M (1999) A diagnostic study of the impact of El Nino on the precipitation in China. Adv Atmos Sci 16(2):229–241
Zhang A, Ma X, Yang T (2007) The influence of drought and water logging disasters on crop yields in Anhui Province. J Appl Meteorol Sci 18(5):619–626
Zhang Q, Singh VP, Li JF, Chen XH (2011) Analysis of the periods of maximum consecutive wet days in China. J Geophys Res 116:D23106. doi:10.1029/2011JD016088
Zhang Q, Sun P, Singh VP, Chen X (2012) Spatial–temporal precipitation changes (1956–2000) and their implications for agriculture in China. Glob Planet Change 82–83:86–95
Zhang Q, Li J, Singh VP, Xu C-Y, Deng J (2013) Influence of ENSO on precipitation in the East River basin, South China. J Geophys Res 118(5):2207–2219
Zhang Q, Qi T, Singh VP, Chen YD, Xiao M (2015) Regional frequency analysis of droughts in China: a multivariate perspective. Water Resour Manag 29:1767–1787
Zhang Q, Wang Y, Singh VP, Gu XH, Kong DD (2016a) Impacts of ENSO and ENSO Modoki + A regimes on seasonal precipitation variations and possible underlying causes in the Huai River basin, China. J Hydrol 533:308–319
Zhang Q, Gu XH, Singh VP, Liu L (2016b) Flood-induced agricultural loss across China and impacts from climate indices. Glob Planet Change 139:31–43
Zhang ZB, Duan ZY, Xu P, Kun Liu, Gui Li (2016c) Development strategy for food security and modern agriculture in Anhui Province. Chin J Eco Agric 24(9):1161–1168
Zhou L, Turvey CG (2014) Climate change, adaptation and China’s grain production. China Econ Rev 28:72–89
Zhu Z, Liu R, Fang W, Wang YH (2011) Preliminary study on drought zonation of winter wheat in North China Plain. J Nat Disasters 12(1):145–150
Acknowledgements
This work is financially supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 41601023), National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (Grant No.: 51425903), the Natural Foundation of the Education Department of Anhui province (Grant No.: KJ2016A851), fully supported by Fund for Creative Research Groups of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 41621061) and by National Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 41401052). Detailed information such as data can be obtained by writing to the corresponding author at zhangq68@bnu.edu.cn. Our cordial gratitude should be extended to the editor, T.S. Murty, and anonymous reviewers for their pertinent and professional comments and suggestions which are greatly helpful for further improvement of the quality of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sun, P., Zhang, Q., Cheng, C. et al. ENSO-induced drought hazards and wet spells and related agricultural losses across Anhui province, China. Nat Hazards 89, 963–983 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-3002-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-3002-4