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JOURNAL OF DESERT RESEARCH  2012, Vol. 32 Issue (6): 1691-1701    DOI:
Weather and Climate     
Continent Drought Characteristics over the Eastern Hemisphere from 1947 to 2006: Analyses based on the SPEI dataset
SHI Chong1,2, LIU Xiao-dong1,3
1.Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Xian 710075, China;
2.Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;
3.Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China
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Abstract  

The characteristics of drought events over the continent in the Eastern Hemisphere (20°W-180°E,40°S-80°N), including the trend and variance, change in drought area, the persistence and periodicity, and possible causes, were analyzed in this paper by using the newest dataset of monthly Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) on a 0.5°×0.5° grid during 1947-2006. Results show that a drying trend is observed over more than 80 percent of the land areas in the Eastern Hemisphere, with the most obvious changes over northern Africa and China-Mongolia border. The regions with high variance are located in northern Africa, Tibetan Plateau, eastern Northwest China, China-Mongolia border, central-northern and northeastern Russia. The frequency of persistent drought events is extremely high in the northern Africa, Tibetan Plateau and the middle part of China-Mongolia border. The power spectral analysis reveals that the main periods of the drought oscillation are 1.5-3 years in most areas of the Eastern Hemisphere, 4 years in parts of central Asia, and 12 years in northern Africa, respectively. The analysis of empirical orthogonal function (EOF) of monthly SPEI anomalies indicates that the first mode (EOF1) shows a spatially uniform variation in most areas of the Eastern Hemisphere and a significant time correlation with the global mean land-surface air temperature (GMT). The high correlation coefficient (0.81) between the EOF1 and GMT means that the drying trends over these continents are closely related to global warming. The 8-month-lag correlation coefficient between the second EOF mode and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) exceeds 0.6, thus, the large-scale drought fluctuations are remarkably influenced by the El Nio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Key words:  drought      SPEI      EOF      global warming      ENSO     
Received:  14 December 2011      Published:  05 February 2012
Articles by authors
SHI Chong1
2
LIU Xiao-dong1
3

Cite this article: 

SHI Chong1,2, LIU Xiao-dong1,3. Continent Drought Characteristics over the Eastern Hemisphere from 1947 to 2006: Analyses based on the SPEI dataset. JOURNAL OF DESERT RESEARCH, 2012, 32(6): 1691-1701.

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http://www.desert.ac.cn/EN/     OR     http://www.desert.ac.cn/EN/Y2012/V32/I6/1691

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