Analysis of the Evolution of Drought, Flood, and Drought-Flood Abrupt Alternation Events under Climate Change Using the Daily SWAP Index

Abstract

With the increase of drought and flood frequency, the drought-flood abrupt alternation events occur frequently. Due to the coexistence and rapid transformation of drought and flood, the drought-flood abrupt alternation events is often more harmful and threatening than the single drought or flood event to the security of the society. This study is to synthetically evaluate the evolving characteristics of drought, flood, and drought-flood abrupt alternation events under climate change, which are identified by using the Standard Weighted Average Precipitation (SWAP) index. The variability of drought, flood, and drought-flood abrupt alternation events in the future is predicted by using GCM projections, whose outputs are corrected by using a daily bias correction method. The results show that: (1) The SWAP index has the capability to judge reliably the onset, duration, and intensity over the study areas, and can be used to monitor drought-flood abrupt alternation events efficiently; (2) In the reference period (1961–2005), for the drought-flood abrupt alternation events, the frequency has a downward trend in the upper reaches and an upward trend in the lower reaches, and the spatial distribution of intensity shows a contrary law to that of frequency; (3) The frequency and intensity of drought-flood abrupt alternation events show an upward trend in the whole basin in the future period (2021–2095), under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. These results indicate that drought-flood abrupt alternation events can be more frequent, and the intensity will significantly increase in the 21st century, which may likely pose a serious impact on this basin.

Responses of Hydrological Processes under Different Shared Socioeconomic Pathway Scenarios in the Huaihe River Basin, China

“…Due to the rising temperature, the content of water vapor in the atmosphere has been increasing, and precipitation has also changed significantly. The original regional and natural water cycle processes of watersheds have been disrupted by climate change, resulting in a fundamental change in the precipitation-runoff response [2][3][4][5]. With global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme floods and droughts disasters will increase in the future [6].…”

Drought and Wetness Variability and the Respective Contribution of Temperature and Precipitation in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

“…Globally, climate change is leading dry regions to become drier and wet regions to become wetter [8,9], and the frequency of extreme drought and flood events would further increase in the 21st century [10][11][12]. ese extreme events can cause billions of dollars in losses and affect more people than any other climate-related disaster [13]. erefore, it is of great significance to comprehensively understand the drought and wetness change trend.…”

Three-Dimensional Vulnerability Assessment of Peanut (Arachis hypogaea) Based on Comprehensive Drought Index and Vulnerability Surface: A Case Study of Shandong Province, China

“…When the random variable is continuously greater than the interception level one or more times, a positive run occurs, and vice versa, a negative run occurs. In the process of identifying drought runs, the length of the negative run is called drought duration, and drought intensity is the area covered by the drought duration and interception level [52]. According to the grade of drought indicators, the index in the time series is separated into two characteristic variables, the duration and intensity of drought events, using run theory.…”