Regional Temporal and Spatial Trends in Drought and Flood Disasters in China and Assessment of Economic Losses in Recent Years

Understanding the distribution in drought and floods plays an important role in disaster risk management. The present study aims to explore the trends in the standardized precipitation index and extreme precipitation days in China, as well as to estimate the economic losses they cause. We found that in the Northeast China, northern of North China and northeast of Northwest China were severely affected by drought disasters (average damaged areas were 6.44 million hectares) and the most severe drought trend was located in West China. However, in the north of East China and Central China, the northeastern of the Southwest China was severely affected by flood disasters (average damaged areas were 3.97 million hectares) and the extreme precipitation trend is increasing in the northeastern of the Southwest China. In the Yangtze River basin, there were increasing trends in terms of drought and extreme precipitation, especially in the northeastern of the Southwest China, where accompanied by severe disaster losses. By combining the trends in drought and extreme precipitation days with the distribution of damaged areas, we found that the increasing trend in droughts shifted gradually from north to south, especially in the Southwest China, and the increasing trend in extreme precipitation gradually shifted from south to north.