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Observed changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl River basin,

China, using the Standardized Precipitation Index and Aridity Index

Article  in  Theoretical and Applied Climatology · September 2009

DOI: 10.1007/s00704-008-0095-4

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Theor Appl Climatol (2009) 98:89–99
DOI 10.1007/s00704-008-0095-4

ORIGINAL PAPER

Observed changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl

River basin, China, using the standardized precipitation
index and aridity index
Qiang Zhang & Chong-Yu Xu & Zengxin Zhang

Received: 24 April 2008 / Accepted: 29 November 2008 / Published online: 16 January 2009
# Springer-Verlag 2009

Abstract Monthly precipitation data of 42 rain stations over in winter. However, different wetting and drying properties
the Pearl River basin for 1960–2005 were analyzed to can be identified across the basin: west parts of the basin
classify anomalously wet and dry conditions by using the tend to be dryer; and southeast parts tend to be wetter; (2) the
standardized precipitation index (SPI) and aridity index (I) for Pearl River basin is dominated by dry tendency in the rainy
the rainy season (April–September) and winter (December– season and is further substantiated by aridity index (I)
February). Trends of the number of wet and dry months variations; and (3) water vapor flux, moisture content
decided by SPI were detected with Mann-Kendall technique. changes in the rainy season and winter indicate different
Furthermore, we also investigated possible causes behind influences of moisture changes on wet and dry conditions
wet and dry variations by analyzing NCAR/NCEP reanalysis across the Pearl River basin. Increasing moisture content
dataset. The results indicate that: (1) the Pearl River basin gives rise to an increasing number of wet months in winter.
tends to be dryer in the rainy season and comes to be wetter However, no fixed relationships can be observed between
moisture content changes and number of wet months in the
rainy season, indicating that more than one factor can
Q. Zhang
Institute of Space and Earth Information Science,
influence the dry or wet conditions of the study region.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The results of this paper will be helpful for basin-scale water
Shatin, Hong Kong, China resource management under the changing climate.
Q. Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment,
Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, 1 Introduction
Chinese Academy of Sciences,
73 East Beijing Road, Assessment of water resource variations is a pre-requisite to
Nanjing 210008, China
understand and adopt appropriate management strategies
C.-Y. Xu with the aim to avoid adverse environmental effects and
Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, reconcile conflicts between users (Xu and Singh 2004).
P.O. Box 1047, Blindern, Climate changes, particularly the current well-evidenced
0316 Oslo, Norway
global warming and its impacts on hydrological regimes,
Z. Zhang especially hydrological extremes, e.g. droughts and floods,
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Forestry Ecological Engineering, have become a priority area both for process research and
Nanjing Forestry University, for water management practices (Xu et al. 2005). It was
73 East Beijing Road,
believed that projected global climate changes have the
Nanjing 210008, China
potential to accelerate the global hydrological cycle. Many
Q. Zhang (*) studies indicated that global warming alters precipitation
Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, patterns and results in more frequent extreme weather
Chinese Academy of Science,
events, e.g. floods, droughts, and rainstorms (Zhang et al.
73 East Beijing Road,
Nanjing 210008, China 2008a; WMO 2003). These results are undoubtedly useful
e-mail: zhangqnj@gmail.com for the better understanding of increasing flood/drought
90
hazards over the world (e.g. Herschy 2002; Mirza 2002).
Furthermore, public awareness of extreme climatic events
has risen sharply in recent years partly due to the
catastrophic nature of floods, droughts, storms and other
climatic extremes (e.g. Beniston and Stephenson 2004;
Zhang et al. 2006a, b, 2008b). Therefore, it is of scientific
and practical merit to better understand changing character-
istics of dryness and wetness variations for improving
integrated water resource management at the basin scale
and human mitigation to hydrological alterations.
Environmental droughts generally include: (1) meteoro-
logical drought, (2) hydrological drought; and (3) agricul-
tural drought (e.g. Livada and Assimakopoulos 2007). This
study focuses on the meteorological drought which is
defined as a lack of precipitation over a region for a period
of time. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) (McKee
et al. 1993, 1995; Hayes et al. 1999) was widely used to
reveal meteorological drought (e.g. Silva et al. 2007; Bordi et
al. 2004a; Moreira et al. 2006) and was proven to be a useful
tool in the estimation of the intensity and duration of drought
events (Bordi et al. 2004a). Livada and Assimakopoulos
(2007) used the SPI to analyze drought events in Greece.
Wilhite and Glantz (1985) applied the SPI in Nebraska on
time scales of 3, 6, 12, 24 and 48 months. In this study, the
SPI is calculated based on 1 and 3-month precipitation time
series.
The Pearl River is the third largest river in drainage
basin area and the second largest river in terms of
streamflow in China. However, uneven spatial and temporal
distribution of water resources, with 80% of the total
discharge occurring in the flooding seasons, i.e. April–
September, negatively affects the effective human use of
water resource. With booming economic development in
the Pearl River basin, pollution-induced water shortage is
threatening the security of regional water resources. The
East River, a tributary of the Pearl River, bears the heavy
responsibility of water supply for Shenzhen and Hong
Kong, and about 80% of Hong Kong’s annual water
demands come from the East River. Due to the significant
role of water resource in regional economic development
and conservation of ecological environment in the region,
precipitation changes and possible underlying causes have
drawn increasing concerns. Wang et al. (2008) explored
changing properties of precipitation extremes and stream-
flow extremes in the East River, one tributary of the Pearl
River basin. Dong (2006) indicated close relations between
extreme precipitation changes and spatial and temporal
distribution of floods in the region. Luo et al. (2008)
analyzed precipitation trends in North River basin by using
Mann-Kendall trend test and Sen’s T test. In terms of dry
and wet changes in China, Bordi et al. (2004b) investigated
time–space variations of dry and wet periods in the east
China. However, to our best knowledge, no such reports are
Q. Zhang et al.
available in the Pearl River basin so far despite numerous
studies of this topic available in the literatures. With this in
mind, the objectives of this paper are: (1) to detect changing
properties of dry and wet episodes defined by SPI; (2) to
analyze trends of frequency and intensity of dry and wet
events by using Mann-Kendall trend test; and (3) to explore
possible causes behind wet and drought variations in the
Pearl River basin with NCAR/NCEP reanalysis dataset.
2 Study region and data
The Pearl River (97°39′E–117°18′E; 3°41′N–29°15′N)
(Fig. 1) is the second largest river in terms of streamflow
in China with a drainage area of 4.42×105 km2 (PRWRC
1991). The Pearl River basin involves three major tributaries:
West River, North River and East River. The West River is
the largest tributary accounting for 77.8% of the total
drainage area of the basin. The North River is the second
largest tributary with a drainage area of 46,710 km2. The
East River accounts for 6.6% of the total area of the Pearl
River. The Pearl River basin is located in the tropical and
sub-tropical climate zone with the annual mean temperature
ranging between 14–22°C. The precipitation mainly concen-
trates during April–September (Zhang et al. 2008a), account-
ing for 72–88% of the annual precipitation (PRWRC 1991).
The daily precipitation dataset covering 1 January 1960–
31 December 2005 was collected from 42 rain stations in
the Pearl River basin. Location of the rain gauging stations
can be referred to Fig. 1. Data quality control was made in
an earlier study (Zhang et al. 2008a). The NCAR/NCEP
reanalysis dataset was used to detect changes of water
vapor flux and moisture content in the Pearl River basin
with the intention to understand possible causes behind wet
and drought changes over the basin.
3 Methodology
3.1 Standardized precipitation index (SPI)
The Standardized precipitation index (SPI) (McKee et al.
1993) was used to quantify the precipitation deficit on
multiple time scales. According to McKee et al. (1993), the
SPI was defined on each of the time scales as the difference
between precipitation on the time series (xi) and the mean
value ðxÞ, divided by the standard deviation (s), i.e.
xi
x
SPI ¼ ð1Þ
s
The same definition is widely used in the literature (e.g.,
McKee et al. 1993; Livada and Assimakopoulos 2007). It is
well known that very seldom the monthly precipitation time
Changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl River basin, China 91

Fig. 1 Study region and rain

gauging stations

series fits a normal distribution, thus, an initial transforma- The drought and wetness severity adopted in this study
tion of the data series is usually done to make SPI a is defined in Table 1. Due to the fact that precipitation
standard normal distribution variable. In this study, differ- mainly concentrated in the rainy season (April–September;
ent probability distributions have been used to fit precipi- Fig. 2), we studied the changes of SPI for the rainy season.
tation time series on various time scales; gamma, normal Because the Pearl River basin bears the heavy responsibil-
and log-normal distributions were selected as candidate ity of water supply for Hong Kong and the Pearl River
distributions; and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was per- Delta, the SPI changes in winter (January, February and
formed to evaluate the goodness-of-fit. The results (not December) were also studied. Moreover, the number of
shown) indicated that normal distribution had the worst months characterized by drought and wetness categories in
performance. Gamma distribution and log-normal distribu- the rainy season was also analyzed.
tion performed equally well for the monthly precipitation
series in the basin. Particularly, log-normal distribution had
better performance in describing precipitation properties in
the rainy season. Gamma distribution performed better in
winter (January, February and December) when compared
Table 1 The standardized precipitation index (SPI) categories based
to log-normal distribution. Even so, log-normal distribution on the initial classification of SPI values
also fit the precipitation changes in winter at >95%
confidence level well. Therefore, we chose log-normal Category SPI Probability (%)
probability distribution for the monthly precipitation series Extremely wet 2.00 and above 2.3
in the basin. After logarithmic transformation of the dataset, Severely wet 1.50–1.99 4.4
the sample mean and variance of the transformed data will Moderately wet 1.00–1.49 9.2
be m^ y and s^ y , then the SPI becomes Near normal −0.99–0.99 68.2
Moderate drought −1.00 to −1.49 9.2
lnð xÞ
m^y Severe drought −1.50 to −1.99 4.4
SPI ¼ Z ¼ ð2Þ −2.00 and less
s^ y Extreme drought 2.3
92 Q. Zhang et al.

300
First the MK test statistic is calculated as
250
X
n
1 X
n

Precipitation (mm)

200 S¼ sgn xj
xi ð4Þ

i¼1 j¼iþ1
150 8

< þ1; xj > xi
100 where sgn xj
xi ¼ 0; xj ¼ xi : and n is the sample
:
50

1; xj < xi
size. The statistics S is approximately normally distributed
0 when n≥8, with the mean and the variance as follows:
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Fig. 2 Areal monthly mean precipitation in the Pearl River basin E ðsÞ ¼ 0 ð5Þ
(mm/month, average of 42 stations) for the period 1960–2005

P
n
3.2 Aridity index nðn
1Þð2n þ 5Þ
ti iði
1Þð2i þ 5Þ
i¼1
V ðS Þ ¼ ð6Þ
To further understand dry and wet variations in terms of 18
agriculture demand, we also calculated the aridity index and where ti is the number of ties of extent i.
compared it with SPI in this study. Aridity index is defined The standardized statistics (Z) for one-tailed test is
by de Martonne (1926) who used it to study irrigation formulated as:
demands (WMO 1975) and is computed as: 8
>
> S
1
12Pi >
> pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi S>0
Ii ¼ ð3Þ >
Ti þ 10 < VarðS Þ
>
Z¼ 0 S¼0 ð7Þ
>
>
where Pi is the monthly precipitation amount; Ti is the >
> Sþ1
>
monthly mean air temperature. The aridity index aims to : pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
> S<0
VarðS Þ
identify the months when irrigation is necessary. Generally,
irrigation is necessary when Ii <20. Research results by
At the 5% significance level, the null hypothesis of no trend
Livada and Assimakopoulos (2007) indicated that, on a
is rejected if |Z| > 1.96.
monthly basis, there is a statistically significant exponential
correlation between SPI and aridity index (I = Ii/12) and
3.4 Calculation of frequency of wet and dry months
significant linear correlation between aridity index and
in the rainy season
rainfall departures (RD). RD is defined as the difference
between the monthly precipitation and its mean values, and
The number of months fell in each categories (frequency of
then is divided by its standard deviation. They also stated
wet and dry months), i.e. from extreme dry to extreme wet
that the exponential relationship between I and SPI should be
(see Table 1 for division) in the rainy season of each year is
due to the normalization of the monthly precipitation
a useful indicator for the dryness/wetness of the catchment
data prior to SPI estimation (Livada and Assimakopoulos
since the rainy season captures 80% of the yearly
2007).
precipitation total. The trends of these numbers are
calculated via the following steps: (1) calculate the SPI
3.3 Trend test for each month in the rainy season and count the number of
months falling in each categories within each year, (2) take
There are many statistical methods available for trend the numbers in each categories of each year as a time series
detection and each method has its own strength and and calculate the trend of the time series, and (3) spatially
weakness in trend detection (Zhang et al. 2008a). In this interpolate the trend calculated for each station. Due to the
paper, the Mann-Kendall (MK) test (Kendall 1975; Mann fact that the number of extreme dry or wet months is scarce,
1945), recommended by the World Meteorological Organi- only, e.g., 75 extreme dry months can be identified in the
zation (Mitchell et al. 1966), is used to study trends of SPI, Pearl River basin for past 46 years account for 4% of total
intensity of wet and dry months and also the number of months in the rainy season. For the sake of comparison, the
months when irrigation is necessary. For the sake of number of extreme dry months will not be analyzed,
completion and understanding of the results, the procedure rather We will only be analyzing the trends of the number
of MK trend test performed in the study is briefly of severe (moderate) dry (wet) months in the rainy
introduced as follows. season.
Changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl River basin, China 93

Fig. 3 Spatial distribution pattern of trends of SPI in the rainy seasons (April–September) across the Pearl River basin. The numbers in the figure
are Z values. Positive values indicate increasing trend and vice versa. If |Z| ≥ 1.96, then the trend is significant at >95% confidence level

4 Results and discussion 4.2 Frequency of wet and dry months in the rainy season

4.1 Spatial and temporal patterns of SPI
Figure 3 maps the spatial distribution of SPI trends across
the Pearl River basin for the rainy season. It can be seen
that the major parts of the basin are characterized by
decreasing SPI, indicating that drying tendency dominates
major parts of the Pearl River basin. However, only a few
places are characterized by the decreasing trends of SPI
significant at >95% confidence level. A slight increasing
trend (not significant at 95% level) of SPI can be identified
in a few locations. Thus, generally, wet tendency is mainly
identified in southeast parts of the Pearl River basin in the
rainy season. As mentioned earlier, the Pearl River basin
bears the heavy responsibility of water supply for the Pearl
River Delta and Hong Kong—and that is particularly the
case for the East River. Figure 4 shows that the entire Pearl
River basin is characterized by increasing SPI in the winter
season. Thus, the wet tendency prevails over the basin in
the winter season, although the increasing trends are not
significant at >95% confidence level.
Figure 5 demonstrates the spatial patterns of trends in the
number of dry or wet months in the rainy season, i.e.
moderate (severe) wet and moderate (severe) dry. Here we
decide the number of moderate (severe) wet and moderate
(severe) dry months in the following way: (1) the month
with SPI>1.5 (or SPI<−1.5) is defined as severe wet (or
dry) month; (2) the month with SPI>1 (or SPI<−1) is
defined as moderate wet (dry) month. Different spatial
patterns can be identified for wet or dry episodes of
different categories (Fig. 5). Figure 5a indicates a decreas-
ing number of severe wet months in large parts of the Pearl
River basin, though this decreasing trend is not statistically
significant. Stations with an increasing number of severe
wet months distribute sporadically across the basin. Similar
phenomenon can be identified in changes of moderate wet
months (Fig. 5b). A large area of the Pearl River basin is
characterized by a decreasing number of moderate wet
months and increasing trends can be observed mainly in
the lower East River, lower North River, lower West River
and lower Beipan River. Different spatial patterns can be

Fig. 4 Spatial distribution pattern of trends of SPI in winter (January, February and December) across the Pearl River basin. The numbers in the
figure are Z values. Positive values indicate increasing trend and vice versa. If |Z| ≥ 1.96, then the trend is significant at >95% confidence level
94 Q. Zhang et al.

• Rain gauging station • Rain gauging station

• Rain gauging station • Rain gauging station

Fig. 5 Spatial distribution pattern of trends of the number of wet and dry. The numbers in the figure are Z values. Positive values indicate
dry months of different categories in the rainy season (April– increasing trend and vice versa. If |Z| ≥ 1.96, then the trend is
September). a severe wet; b moderate wet; c severe dry; d moderate significant at >95% confidence level

observed in the changes of severe and moderate dry
months (Fig. 5c,d). Major parts of the Pearl River basin
are dominated by increasing severe and moderate dry
months. Similarly, these trends are not statistically signif-
icant. It can be seen from Fig. 5c that the increasing
number of severe dry months is mainly observed in Beipan
River, Nanpan River and Hongshui River and decreasing
trends are mainly found in the east parts of the Pearl River
basin. In terms of the number of moderate dry months,
increasing trends are observed in west and south parts of
the basin, e.g. Nanpan River, Beipan River, Zuo River, Yu
River, Qian River and Liu River. Decreasing trends in the
number of moderate dry months are identified mainly in
the east parts of the Pearl River basin (Fig. 5d). Figure 6
illustrates areal average SPI across the Pearl River basin. It
can be observed from Fig. 6 that SPI of the basin is
increasing before 1980s, and is decreasing after 1980s. An
obvious decreasing tendency is found during 1985–1998.
SPI in winter, however, is consistently increasing, partic-
ularly during 1970–2005.

0.5
Fig. 6 Areal average SPI
changes in the rainy season
(April–September) and winter
0
(DJF) for the Pearl River basin.
SPI

Dashed lines denote quadratic

fit
–0.5

SPI in rainy season

–1
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
1.5
SPI in winter
1

0.5
SPI

–0.5

–1
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Time (year)
Changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl River basin, China
Fig. 7 Trends of the number of months when agricultural irrigation is necessary, i.e. I<20. The numbers in the figure are Z values. Positive values
indicate increasing trend and vice versa. If |Z| ≥ 1.96, then the trend is significant at >95% confidence level
Figure 7 shows trends of frequency of months when
irrigation is necessary, i.e. I<20; hereafter, we will simply
call months with I<20 dry months. It can be seen from
Fig. 7 that an increasing number of dry months can be
detected mainly in western parts of the Pearl River basin, i.
e. Nanpan River, Beipan River, Hongshui River, lower Liu
River and upper Zuo River. Major regions in the eastern
parts of the basin are characterized by a decreasing
frequency of dry months. Figure 7 demonstrates that places
characterized by increasing number of dry months largely
match with those characterized by an increasing number of
severe dry months defined by SPI (Fig. 5c,d). These results
imply that, at least in the Pearl River basin, SPI and I index
seem to perform similarly well in reflecting wet and dry
conditions in the basin. To verify the results of Fig. 5, we
further analyzed relationships between I, SPI and rainfall
departure (RD), and for illustrative purpose the results for a
randomly selected station are shown in Fig. 8a for the rainy
season and Fig. 8b for winter. Similar results have been
obtained for the relationships between I, SPI and RD when
compared to those by Livada and Assimakopoulos (2007)
over Greece. Excellent linear relations can be fit between I
and RD, and exponential relationships between I and SPI.
The exponential relationship between I and SPI can be
attributed to the transformation of original monthly precip-
itation data by using log-normal distribution function.
Fig. 8 Scatter diagram between
I, SPI, (open circles) and I, RD
(closed circles) and correlation
lines for for one station selected
randomly from the dataset. a
Rainy season; b winter. The
example station: Xianning sta-
tion (26°52′N, 104°17′E)
95
4.3 Water vapor flux analysis
Water vapor flux plays the key role in changes of drought
and wet conditions; the water vapor is brought to the
Asian continent mainly by the monsoonal flows. Gener-
ally, three major low-level monsoonal streams transport
water vapor to China (Simmonds et al. 1999; Tian et al.
2004; Chow et al. 2008): (1) the southwesterly flow
towards the Indian peninsula and Bengal Bay which is
associated with the Indian summer monsoon, and (2) the
southerly flow in the South China Sea and (3) the
southeasterly flow associated with the southern flange of
the north Western Pacific subtropical high (0–20°N, 120–
150°E). Routes of the water vapor transport in the rainy
season (Fig. 9a) clearly demonstrate the sources of the
water vapor: Indian peninsula, Bengal Bay and South China
Sea. However, water vapor in the Pearl River is mainly
from southwesterly flow. Intensity of water vapor flux in
the rainy season is larger than in winter (Fig. 9), indicating
considerable importance of water vapor transport on the
determination of rainy and dry seasons. To further
understand the possible impacts of moisture content on
dry and wet conditions in the rainy season and in winter, we
also calculated and plotted the standardized total number of
wet months (SPI>0) together with standardized moisture
budget and moisture content in the rainy season and in
96 Q. Zhang et al.

(A) (B)
Fig. 9 Water vapor flux (kg × m−1 × s−1) in the rainy season (a) and in winter (b) for the Pearl River basin

winter (Figs. 10 and 11). It is observed that the relationships
between standardized total number of wet months (SPI>0)
with moisture budget and moisture content are remarkably
better in winter (Fig. 11, dry season) than in the rainy
season (Fig. 10). Furthermore, Fig. 11 indicates an
increasing tendency for the standardized total number of
wet months, moisture budget and moisture content and this
increasing trend is significant at >95% confidence level.
This means that, in winter, increasing moisture budget and
moisture content results in an increasing number of wet
months across the Pearl River basin. This result is in
agreement with earlier result that SPI in winter is in
increasing tendency (Fig. 4), showing considerable influ-
ences of moisture variations on wet and dry conditions in
winter. No conclusive relations can be identified between
standardized total number of wet months (SPI>0) and
standardized moisture budget and moisture content in the
rainy season. Thus, we can say that in the winter (dry)
season the wet/dry conditions are mainly influenced by
water vapor and moisture content in the air, while more
factors than moisture transport influence the wet/dry
conditions in the rainy season.

2
Fig. 10 Comparison between
standardized areal total amount 1
of wet months (SPI>0) and
moisture content and moisture 0
budget in the rainy season
(April–September) across the –1
Pearl River basin –2

–3 Standardized number of wet rainy season

Standardized moisture content
–4
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
2

–1

–2

–3 Standardized number of wet rainy season

Standardized moisture budget
–4
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Changes of drought/wetness episodes in the Pearl River basin, China
3
Fig. 11 Comparison between
standardized areal total amount 2 Standardized moisture content
of wet months (SPI>0) and
moisture content and moisture 1
budget in winter (January, Feb-
ruary and December) across the 0
Pearl River basin
–1
–2
–3
1960 1965
3
2 Standardized moisture budget
1
–1
–2
–3
1960 1965
5 Conclusions
In this study, we quantitatively evaluated dry and wet
conditions by using the standardized precipitation index
(SPI) and aridity index (I) based on monthly precipitation
dataset of 42 rain stations in the Pearl River basin for 1960–
2005. Mann-Kendall trend test was used to detect trends
within the number of months of different dry and wet
categories and SPI values. Furthermore, we also attempted
to explore possible causes behind changing properties of
dry and wet conditions across the Pearl River basin by
using NCAR/NCEP dataset. Some interesting conclusions
are obtained as follows:
1. Different dry or wet tendencies can be identified in the
Pearl River basin in the rainy season and in winter. The
Pearl River basin tends to be dryer in the rainy season
and to be wetter in winter. However, different parts of
the basin show different patterns of dry and wet
conditions— a general dry tendency can be observed
in major parts of the basin in the rainy season, and a
wet tendency in winter can be identified across the
entire basin. Most of the stations show decreasing SPI
index of rainy season but some are not, which may be
due to the extremely inhomogenous spatial distribution
of precipitation as a result of stronger convective
precipitation and typhoon rain storms which are very
common in the rainy season in the Pearl River basin.
However, the relatively more homogenous spatial
patterns of SPI index in winter may be attributed to
relatively stable air masses in the season.
97
Standardized number of wet winter
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Standardized number of wet winter
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
2. In terms of the number of dry or wet months in the rainy
season, major parts of the Pearl River basin are
characterized by a decreasing frequency of severe and
moderate wet months. However, an increasing number
of moderate wet months can be observed mainly in
southeast parts of the Pearl River basin. Increasing
frequency of severe dry months can be observed in
regions <108E°, and an increasing number of moderate
wet months can be found in regions <107°E and
between 108–110°E. Results of aridity index analysis
also show a decreasing number of dry months (I<20) in
the rainy season in eastern parts of the Pearl River basin;
adverse trends are found in western parts of the basin.
These results are in good agreement with changes in the
number of dry months in the rainy season. Therefore,
aridity index and SPI perform similarly well in reflecting
dry conditions over the Pearl River basin. Relationships
between I, SPI and RD indicate significant exponential
correlation between I and SPI, and significant linear
correlation between I and RD. The exponential correla-
tion between I and SPI may be due to the logarithmic
transformation of original monthly precipitation data.
3. Moisture flux analysis based on NCAR/NCEP dataset
indicates a stronger intensity of water-vapor transport in
the rainy season than that in winter (dry season),
showing considerable influence of water-vapor flux on
dry and wet conditions of the Pearl River basin. The
source of water vapor lies mainly in the Indian peninsula
and Bengal Bay. Good correlation can be identified
between moisture budget, moisture content and number
of wet months in winter over the Pearl River basin.
98
Increasing moisture budget and moisture content gives
rise to an increasing number of wet months in winter
across the basin. Zhang et al. (2008c) indicated
decreasing summer precipitation and increasing winter
precipitation in the Pearl River basin, and attributed
precipitation variations to changes in the East Asian
summer monsoon system, which is in good agreement
with the results of this study, i.e. drying tendency in the
rainy season and wetting tendency in winter. Wang
(2001) indicated the weakening of the Asian monsoon
circulation after the 1970s which is not beneficial for the
northward propagation of the rain belt, and it can explain
wet and dry variations in the Pearl River basin. It should
be noted here that in comparison with winter, worse
correlation can be detected between moisture budget,
moisture content and number of wet months in the rainy
season, meaning that more factors than moisture budget
and moisture content influence the dry and wet
conditions in the rainy season, which needs further
investigation in the on-going research.
4. To our knowledge, this study is the first that tries to
explore spatial and temporal variations of dryness/
wetness conditions by using more than one indicator, i.
e. SPI and I, over the Pearl River basin and even in
China. Comparison was made between dryness/wetness
indicators by I and SPI with thee aim to show the
applicability of these two techniques and to get a full
picture of dryness/wetness variations in the Pearl River
basin. Particularly, this study attempted to find out the
causes behind the changing properties of dryness/
wetness status in the Pearl River basin by using
NCAR/NCEP reanalysis dataset. This study is of great
scientific and practical merit towards the better under-
standing of impacts of climate changes, particularly the
global warming, on water resources, agricultural activ-
ities and other human activities on river basin scales.
Acknowledgements The work described in this paper was sup-
ported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CUHK405308), by
a Direct Grant from the Faculty of Social Science, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong (Project No.: 4450183), National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 40701015), and the
Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities—the
111 Project of Hohai University. Cordial thanks should be extended to
two anonymous reviewers and the managing editor, Prof. Dr. Hartmut
Grassl, for their invaluable comments and suggestions which greatly
improved the quality of this paper.
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