Future changes in hydrological drought across the Yangtze River Basin: identification, spatial–temporal characteristics, and concurrent probability

Abstract

Hydrological droughts have caused greater damage due to climate change and rapid socio-economic development. Exploring future hydrological drought variations is imperative for drought defense and infrastructure construction. This study aims to investigate future changes in hydrological droughts across the Yangtze River Basin during 2025 ∼ 2100. The Distributed Time-Variant Gain Model coupled with the Standard Operation Policy module (DTVGM-SOP) was employed to project future runoff driven by the bias-corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data. Subsequently, future spatial–temporal changes in the characteristics of hydrological droughts were analyzed based on the Standardized Runoff Index (SRI). Lastly, future changes in the probability of concurrent hydrological droughts were evaluated using the bivariate copula functions. Results show that: (1) The DTVGM-SOP model can satisfactorily simulate monthly streamflow with a high Nash-Sutcliff Efficiency (NSE) of 0.75 ∼ 0.92. Future annual maximum discharge and annual average discharge in the mainstream and the northern tributaries are expected to increase by 3.34%∼58.19% and 3.11%∼32.66% respectively, while annual maximum discharge in the southern tributaries decreases by 0.54%∼20.09%. (2) The future annual and seasonal hydrological drought frequency is expected to decrease in most regions, while the frequency in spring increases in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. The duration and severity of future hydrological droughts are expected to decrease by 9.52%∼78.69% and 5.13%∼81.36% in the whole basin except the source area and the Yalong River Basin. (3) Future concurrent hydrological droughts will be mitigated with decreasing frequency. The probability of concurrent hydrological droughts is expected to decrease by 46.15%∼96.47%, while future changes in the conditional probability of the mainstream are diverse in different concurrent scenarios with a range of −93.41%∼40.09%. The findings are helpful to improve the understanding of future hydrological drought variations in the Yangtze River Basin and provide essential information for damage reduction.