Attribution of trends in meteorological drought during 1960–2016 over the Loess Plateau, China

This study uses two forms of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), namely PDSI_TH (potential evapotranspiration estimated-by Thornthwaite equation) and PDSI_PM estimated by FAO Penman-Monteith equation), to characterize meteorological drought trends during 1960–2016 in Loess Plateau (LP) its four subregions. By designing a series numerical experiments, we mainly investigated various climatic factors’ contributions at annual, summer, autumn time scales. Overall, drying trend is much larger than that PDSI_PM. The former more sensitive air temperature precipitation, while latter most precipitation among all factors. Increasing results decreasing (drying) PDSI_TH, which further aggravated jointly leading relatively severe trend. For considers comprehensive factors, partly counteracted declining wind speed solar radiation. Therefore, ultimately shows smaller past decades.