Abstract
Drought monitoring is challenging, but it is required for improving agricultural production, protecting the ecological environment, and reducing economic losses in drought-prone regions such as the Mongolian Plateau (MP). This study is a systematic analysis of the spatiotemporal changes in the characteristics of drought events (drought duration, severity, intensity, frequency, peak, and starting season) at the sub-regional scale between 1959 and 2018 based on the run theory and using the gridded self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) dataset. Principal component analysis and Varimax rotation and the Mann–Kendall trend and Sen’s slope were used for the sub-regional division and drought trend analysis, respectively. In addition, wavelet analysis was employed to analyze drought periodicity and determine the influence of large-scale climate indices on regional drought variation. The study results indicate clear differences in the spatial patterns of drought characteristics in the MP. The northern part suffered from droughts with longer duration and higher severity, whereas more drought events with shorter duration and less severity occurred in the southern part. Most of the MP experienced a relatively wet trend in 1996–2018 compared to the period of 1959–1995. The frequency of spring drought events showed an increasing trend in 1996–2018, unlike in 1959–1995. Some drought events simultaneously affected two or several sub-regions. The wavelet analysis results indicated that the drought periodicity in the MP was 10–64 months. The Arctic Oscillation (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) was significantly correlated with drought in the southern (northern) part.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilDrought is generally considered one of the most extreme weather events and it has a significant impact on ecosystems, agriculture, and the economy [1,2]
Based on the rule of thumb and the scree plot of eigenvalues, the Mongolian Plateau (MP) was divided into six sub-regions (Figure 3), namely the northeast (NE), the southern MP (SM), the northwest (NW), the northern MP (NM), the southeast (SE), and the southwest (SW)
More drought events with shorter duration and less severity occurred in the SE and SM
Summary
Introduction published maps and institutional affilDrought is generally considered one of the most extreme weather events and it has a significant impact on ecosystems, agriculture, and the economy [1,2]. Drought was responsible for global annual losses of 221 billion dollars between 1960 and 2016 [3]. Drought monitoring is challenging, but it is required for improving agricultural production, protecting the ecological environment, and reducing economic losses. In order to describe the characteristics and factors of drought more accurately, a number of drought indices have been developed and applied [7,8,9,10,11]. These drought indices can be roughly divided into two categories according to the method of establishment. One type of drought indicator is used to assess the statistical distribution of precipitation using iations
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