Spatiotemporal Distribution of Droughts in the Xijiang River Basin, China and Its Responses to Global Climatic Events

Jizhong Qiu,Yunpeng Wang,Jie Xiao

doi:10.3390/w9040265

Abstract

The Xijiang River is a main branch of the Pearl River, the largest river in South China. Droughts in this area have seriously influenced local water resource utilization, and socio-economic development. The spatiotemporal distribution of droughts and its responses to global climatic events are of critical significance for the assessment and early warning of drought disasters. In this paper, the spatiotemporal patterns of droughts characterized by Rotated Empirical Orthogonal Function/Rotated Principal Components (REOF/RPC) in the Xijiang River Basin, China were evaluated using the Self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index (Sc-PDSI). The drought responses to El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), India Ocean Dipole (IOD), and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) were analysed by Pearson correlation and multiple stepwise regression. The results showed that one year earlier NAO was the dominant factor impacting the droughts in the Xijiang Basin. Its contribution for the RPC2s of the annual, the first and second half years, winter, summer, autumn, and February were −0.556, −0.419, 0.597, −0.447, 0.542, 0.600, and −0.327, respectively. Besides the two adjacent Pacific and India oceans, the droughts seem be influenced by distant Atlantic climatic events. These results offer new reference insights into the early warning of droughts as well as the planning and management of water resources in the study area.

Highlights

As a long-term cumulative effect of lower precipitation, drought disasters can occur in most climatic divisions
The research on its spatiotemporal distribution and its responses to global climatic events are of critical significance for the assessment and early warning of drought disasters, as well as rational utilization of regional water resources
This paper provides a theoretical basis for understanding, evaluating, and predicting the occurrence and cause of droughts in the Xijiang River Basin, which offers novel and useful insights for the planning and management of local water resources and agricultural production

Summary

Introduction

As a long-term cumulative effect of lower precipitation, drought disasters can occur in most climatic divisions. In China, where water resources are lower per capita and sub-optimally distributed in space and time, the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of drought should be carefully considered in water resource planning and management. The problem of drought can occur at the regional or global scale. The research on its spatiotemporal distribution and its responses to global climatic events are of critical significance for the assessment and early warning of drought disasters, as well as rational utilization of regional water resources. Some attention has been paid to drought problems in Southern China [32,33,34,35], especially in the Xijiang River

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