Analysis of Spatial-Temporal Variation of Agricultural Drought and Its Response to ENSO over the Past 30 Years in the Huang-Huai-Hai Region, China

This study constructed a time series of the seasonal Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) based on a remotely sensed dataset from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (NOAA/AVHRR) and Earth Observing System/Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (EOS/MODIS). We examined the spatiotemporal variation in drought in the Huang-Huai-Hai region of China during the period from 1981 to 2011. Combined with the El Niño and southern oscillation (ENSO) indicator (i.e., the Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly, SSTA of the El Niño 3.4 area), the spatial and temporal relationship of agricultural drought in this region and ENSO was analyzed. The results showed that drought demonstrated a significant downward trend (95% confidence level) which covered 38.01 ~ 55.13% of the farmland in this region. In addition, the largest area of drought reducing appeared in winter. The significant decreasing tendency of agricultural drought started from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, whose variation cycles were mainly between 2.5 to 5 a (year). TVDI series were closely correlated to the ENSO index sequences at the 2.5 to 7 a cycle, and there was a delay from 0.16 to 1.40 a between them. However, the correlation between TVDI and ENSO index series was less. These findings show that there is a relationship between the spatiotemporal changes of agricultural drought in the Huang-Huai-Hai region of China and ENSO events over the recent 30 years