Long-Term Seasonal Drought Trends in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

Abstract

In recent years, drought events have influenced agriculture, water-dependent industries, and energy supply in many parts of the world. The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is particularly susceptible to drought events due to large-scale monsoon circulation anomalies. Using the 0.5 × 0.5 resolution rainfall and potential evapotranspiration data set from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), we assessed the changes in seasonal drought variation and effects of climate variables on drought over the CPEC for the period of 1980 to 2018 using the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Our results show a statistically significant negative trend of SPEI over the hyper-arid region for two monsoons (December–February and June–September) and intra-monsoonal seasons (March–May and October–November), suggesting that the hyper-arid region (southern and southwestern part of the CPEC) is experiencing more frequent drought. A high probability for the occurrence of winter (30–35%) and summer (20–25%) droughts are observed in hyper-arid regions and gradually decreases from south to north of the CPEC. Decreasing seasonal rainfall and increasing potential evapotranspiration with increasing temperature in hyper-arid and arid regions resulted in frequent drought events during the winter monsoon season (from December to February). The findings from this study provide a theoretical basis for the drought management of the CPEC and a framework for understanding changes in drought in this region from climate projections.