Abstract
The semi-arid and arid drylands of China, which are located in the inland region of Eurasia, have experienced rapid climate change. Some regions in particular, have shown upward trends in the observational records of precipitation. However, there is more to drying and wetting than just changes in precipitation which still have large uncertainties. Coherent results, however, can be obtained, at the regional scale, with the use of multiple indices as shown in the recent literature. We divided the drylands of China into three sub-regions, i.e., a semi-arid (SA), an eastern-arid (EA) and a western-arid (WA) region. Precipitation from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and Climatic Research Unit (CRU), statistical and physical drought indices, including the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), self-calibrating PDSI (sc_PDSI), Root zone soil moisture (Root_sm) and Surface soil moisture (Surf_sm) from Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM), and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were used to identify temporal and spatial patterns in drying and wetting. Data were selected from 1982–2012, in line with the availability of the remotely sensed vegetation data. Results show that the drylands of China exhibits a pattern of wetting in the west and drying in the east. The semi-arid region in the east is becoming drier and the drought area is increasing, with the values of CMA_P, CRU_P, PDSI, sc_PDSI, SPEI-01,SPEI-06, SPEI-12, Root_sm, Surf_sm at −1.064 mm yr−1, −0.834 mm yr−1, −0.050 yr−1 (p < 0.1), −0.174 yr−1 (p < 0.1), −0.014 yr−1, −0.06, −0.021 (p < 0.1), −0.257×10−3 m3 m−3 yr−1, −0.024×10−3 m3 m−3 yr−1, respectively. The arid region generally exhibits a wetting trend, while the area in drought declines only in the western arid region, but not in the eastern arid part. In the semi-arid region, growing season (May to September) NDVI is significantly correlated (p < 0.1) with eight out of nine indicators. We show in this study that the semi-arid region needs more study to protect the vegetation ecosystem and the water resources.
Highlights
Drying and wetting patterns due to climate change have an important impact on social development and ecosystems
Both the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and Climatic Research Unit (CRU) datasets show that precipitation decreased from the east to the west, with the lowest precipitation occurring in the desert areas of the western arid region
The vegetation condition, as reflected by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data, further confirmed the above conclusion that the precipitation was underestimated by the CRU dataset
Summary
Drying and wetting patterns due to climate change have an important impact on social development and ecosystems. They have always been one of the key issues of climate change. The assessment of drying and wetting trends at a global scale using the drought indices remains highly controversial. Sheffield et al, used PDSI, finding no significant drought trends globally [7]. This was mainly due to the calculation of PDSI with two different schemes, i.e., the Thornthwaite method as well as the Penman–Monteith method, were used for the estimation of potential evapotranspiration (PET). The Thornthwaite method [8]
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