Temporal and spatial evolution patterns of drought in China over the past 500 years

Drought features prominently among natural disasters in Chinese history. Analysing the laws that govern the spatial and temporal evolution of drought could support decision-making for drought prevention and control. However, few studies have investigated the long-term evolution rules of drought events on different spatial and temporal scales. In this paper, the spatio-temporal change patterns of drought in China were analysed with geostatistical methods based on the 1470–2000a drought datasets in China, and then the possible future drought trend was predicted. Results showed that (1) the drought risk in the northern region was the highest during the past 500 years. And the drought intensity index showed an overall increasing trend with a detail pattern of weakening->strengthening-> weakening-> strengthening; (2) the drought condition in the north was severe than that in the south, but the drought trend in the south was significantly aggravated. (3) The drought gravity centres were mainly distributed in the north, but they showed a tendency to move southward. (4) From 1470 to 2000, the study area showed a significant drought enhancement, which was predicted to show an increasing trend of drought after 2000.