Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY
Volume 39, Issue 11, Pages 4392-4412Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/joc.6081
Keywords
candidate distribution; China; drought evolution; sensitive analysis
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2018YFC1508101]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41701034, 41471030]
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Drought occurs more frequently in the context of climate change and threatens water security worldwide. An appropriate fitting distribution is crucial for accurately identifying drought using drought indices. Here, seven two-parameter distributions (Gamma, Gumbel, Logistic, Log-Logistic, Log-normal, Normal, and Weibull) and four distributions (general logistic, generalized extreme value, Normal, and Pearson Type III) are applied to calculate the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), respectively, to choose the most appropriate fit for the 541 stations in China. The results show that, in most cases, Gamma and general logistic were the best distributions for SPI and SPEI, respectively. Nevertheless, we noted that Pearson Type III and generalized extreme value also fit the SPEI series well, indicating the importance of distribution fitting assessment for various regions. The annual and seasonal drought evolutions across China were clarified, with drought decreasing significantly in western Northwest China (annually and each season), northern North China (spring and winter), the Tibetan Plateau (spring), and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River (winter) and increasing mainly in South China (spring) and western South China (summer and autumn). The intensity, duration and severity of light, moderate, and severe drought were also detected; the results suggest that drought in China is mainly concentrated around the changes in light and moderate drought. Additionally, we assessed the sensitivity of drought evolution to various meteorological variables. The most sensitive variable in South China, North China and the Tibetan Plateau is precipitation, followed by wind speed, temperature, relative humidity, and sunshine duration; in Northwest China, the order is wind speed, precipitation, temperature, relative humidity, and sunshine duration. Furthermore, the correlation results also indicate that the drought evolution is affected by the multivariate ENSO index, while the influencing characteristics are different in various seasons and regions. The results in this paper contribute to drought mitigation and the effective utilization of water resources in China.
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