In a changing climate, drought and flood hazards become more frequent, posing high risks to human life and property. The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is selected as the study area. The flood and drought records, and the daily precipitation data at 23 stations from 1958 to 2016 are adopted. The temporal and spatial trends of precipitation intensities, precipitation days and the corresponding proportions relative to the total amounts are examined using the Mann-Kendall trend test. The influence of the rainfall intensity on floods and droughts in Guangxi is also investigated. During the past 59 years in Guangxi, there is a significant decrease in light rain, and an increase in rainstorm in general. The larger the rainfall intensity is, the more stations show increasing trends of the corresponding rain events on different time scales (the monthly, seasonal or annual scale). Significant decreasing trends of the number of days with light precipitation are found over entire Guangxi, while increasing trends of the number of days with rainstorm events are widely distributed in most parts of Guangxi. There is a decrease in the number of stations indicating increases in proportion of light precipitation days, while an increase in the number of stations showing increases in proportion of rainstorm days. A significant increase in flood hazards is detected since the 1990s. The precipitation in Guangxi tends to be intensified in the future. The frequency and intensity of drought and flood events are very likely to increase, posing challenges to future agricultural production, water resources planning and management.

Detecting the characteristics and variability of droughts is of crucial importance. In this study, Guizhou Province in China is selected as the target area, and the dataset there covering daily precipitation and drought records from 1960 to 2016 is adopted. The spatial and temporal differences in yearly and seasonal Dnp (the drought indicator of continuous days without available precipitation) values and longest Dnp as well as their trends are examined. Then the Dnp values and droughts are classified into different categories, and the relationships between Dnp and droughts are revealed. There was a steep increasing trend in yearly Dnp with a rate of 6 d/10a, and the Mann–Kendall (MK) value was estimated to be 5.05 in the past 56 years. The seasonal Dnp values showed significant increasing trends. Yearly and seasonal Dnp varied significantly in the space domain. There were slight increases in yearly and four seasonal longest Dnp values in the time domain. Although the increases in the spring and summer were not significant, heavy droughts tended to occur at this time. As to the Dnp values corresponding to different levels of droughts, there was only a decrease in mild drought, while there were significant increases in mild, moderate, and heavy droughts. The mild droughts increased significantly in summer, and the moderate droughts increased significantly in spring. Different levels of Dnp also varied in the spatial domain. The elevation effect is not obvious in Guizhou province.