Attribution Analysis of Long-Term Trends of Aridity Index in the Huai River Basin, Eastern China

Meng Li, Ronghao Chu, Abu Reza Md. Towfiqul Islam, Yuelin Jiang and Shuanghe Shen
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Meng Li: School of Resources and Environment, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China
Ronghao Chu: Anhui Public Meteorological Service Center, Anhui Meteorological Bureau, Hefei 230031, China
Abu Reza Md. Towfiqul Islam: Department of Disaster Management, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur 5400, Bangladesh
Yuelin Jiang: School of Resources and Environment, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China
Shuanghe Shen: Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education (KLME), Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Change (ILCEC), Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters (CIC-FEMD), Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Agricultural Meteorology, College of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-25

Abstract: This paper aims to combinedly investigate the spatiotemporal trends of precipitation (Pre), reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ), and aridity index (AI) by employing nonparametric methods based on daily datasets from 137 meteorological stations during 1961–2014 in the Huai River Basin (HRB). The dominant factors influencing ET 0 and AI trends were also explored using the detrended and differential equation methods. Results show that (1) Pre, ET 0 , and AI were much larger in summer than in other seasons, and AI had a nonsignificant increasing trend in annual time scale, while Pre and ET 0 exhibited decreasing trends, but AI showed a downward trend in spring and autumn (becoming drier) and an upward trend during summer and winter due to increased Pre (becoming wetter); (2) lower AI values were identified in north and higher in south, and lower ET 0 was identified in south and higher in north in annual time scale, growing season and spring, while ET 0 decreased from west to east in summer and winter, the spatial distribution of Pre was similar to that of AI; (3) for ET 0 trends, in general, wind speed at two-meter height (u 2 ) was the dominant factor in spring, autumn, winter, and annual time scale, while in other seasons, solar radiation (R s ) played a dominant role; (4) for AI trends, AI was mostly contributed by Pre in spring, autumn, and winter, the R s contributed the most to AI trend in growing season and summer, then in annual time scale, u 2 was the dominant factor; (5) overall, the contribution of Pre to AI trends was much larger than that of ET 0 in spring, autumn, and winter, while AI was mostly contributed by ET 0 in annual time scale, growing season and summer. The outcomes of the study may improve our scientific understanding of recent climate change effects on dry–wet variations in the HRB; moreover, this information may be utilized in other climatic regions for comparison analyses.

Keywords: precipitation; reference evapotranspiration; aridity index; detrending method; Huai River Basin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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