Causes and Predictability of the 2021 Spring Southwestern China Severe Drought

In the spring of 2021, southwestern China (SWC) experienced extreme drought, accompanied by the highest seasonal-mean temperature record since 1961. This drought event occurred in the decaying phase of a La Niña event with negative geopotential height anomalies over the Philippine Sea, which is distinct from the historical perspective. Historically, spring drought over SWC is often linked to El Niño and strong western North Pacific subtropical high. Here, we show that the extreme drought in the spring of 2021 may be mainly driven by the atmospheric internal variability and amplified by the warming trend. Specifically, the evaporation increase due to the high temperature accounts for about 30% of drought severity, with the contributions of its linear trend portion being nearly 20% and the interannual variability portion being about 10%. Since the sea surface temperature forcing from the tropical central and eastern Pacific played a minor role in the occurrence of drought, it is a challenge for a climate model to capture the 2021 SWC drought beyond one-month lead times.