Spatio-temporal characteristics and driving factors of the meteorological drought across China based on CMIP6

Abstract The characteristics of meteorological drought in different river basins in China have clear spatio-temporal differences and the difference between watersheds is also reflected in the influence mechanism of meteorological drought. This study investigated the meteorological drought risk under different future emission scenarios, based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6). Furthermore, we explored the influence of precipitation and temperature on meteorological drought in different basins of China in the future. Meanwhile, the uncertainty associated with CMIP6 in different watersheds is also considered. In the future, the frequency of meteorological drought events mainly shows a decreasing trend, but the drought intensity and duration increase. In China, the rate of probability change in drought's intensity was greater than drought duration and the probability distribution of drought characteristics is significantly different between the historical and the future periods. Under the low and medium emission scenarios (SSP126 and SSP245), the Joint Recurrence Period of future drought intensity and duration increases and the Recurrence Period decreases in the western and north-eastern basins. Precipitation plays a major role in the meteorological drought, especially in the northeast and southeast basins of China.