Drought severity change in China during 1961–2012 indicated by SPI and SPEI

Wen Wang (), Ye Zhu, Rengui Xu and Jintao Liu

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2015, vol. 75, issue 3, 2437-2451

Abstract: Using monthly meteorological observation data at 633 sites in China during 1961–2012, the drought severity change has been investigated in terms of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) with potential evapotranspiration estimated by the Penman–Monteith equation (SPEI_pm). Significant wetting appeared to have occurred in northwestern corner of China (Xinjiang Province), especially in winter. The middle to northeastern Tibetan Plateau also experienced wetting in the last 52 years in general. Significantly, drying occurred in Central China (mostly in the middle Yellow River basin) and southwestern China (Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau) in spring and in autumn. There is no evidence of an increase in drought severity over China taking the whole country into account. On the contrary, the hyper-arid and arid zones got significantly wetter in the last 52 years as indicated by both SPI and SPEI. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Standardized Precipitation Index; Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index; Land-surface humidity; Drought (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-014-1436-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:75:y:2015:i:3:p:2437-2451

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-014-1436-5

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().