Quantitative risk assessment of the effects of drought on extreme temperature in eastern China

Abstract

AbstractHot extremes may lead to disastrous impacts on human health and agricultural production. Previous studies have revealed the feedback between drought and hot extremes in large regions of eastern China, while quantifying the impact of antecedent drought on hot extremes has been limited. This study aims at quantitatively assessing the risk of extreme temperature conditioned on the antecedent drought condition represented by Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) during summer time in eastern China. A copula‐based model is proposed to construct the joint probability distribution of extreme temperature and drought based on 6 month SPI (SPI6). Accordingly, the conditional probability distribution is employed to quantify impacts of antecedent dry (and wet) conditions on the exceedance probability of extreme temperature. Results show that the likelihood of extreme temperature exceeding high quantiles is higher given antecedent dry conditions than that given antecedent wet conditions in large regions from southwestern to northeastern China. Specifically, the conditional probability difference of temperature exceeding 80th percentile given SPI6 lower than or equal to −0.5 and SPI6 higher than 0.5 is around 0.2–0.3. The case study of the 2006 summer hot extremes and drought in Sichuan and Chongqing region shows that the conditional return period of extreme temperature conditioned on antecedent drought is around 5–50 years shorter than univariate return period. These results quantify the impact of antecedent drought on subsequent extreme temperature and highlight the important role of antecedent drought in intensifying hot extremes in these regions.