GRACE and land surface models reveal severe drought in eastern China in 2019

• Five GRACE solutions and four land surface model outputs are fused respectively. Fused data reveal severe terrestrial water storage deficits in eastern China 2019. Meteorological Drought Composite Index identified this drought event. This event started northern migrated to southern China. is the result of northerly wind anomaly sinking anomaly. An extreme on record occurred 2019 caused (TWS) deficits. It important understand process assess its impacts. We combine Gravity Recovery Climate Experiment (GRACE) observations (LSM) thoroughly investigate To consolidate quantitative analysis, we fuse five sets GRACE-derived TWS LSM-based soil moisture (SMS) data, respectively, using generalized three-cornered hat method least-square method, thereby generate robust SMS results. Both LSM results suggest that July northeastern then spread south August lasted until December, influencing a vast area ∼2.0 × 10 6 km 2 The center first appeared North China, moved southward middle lower reaches Yangtze River basin, finally stayed South from show largest regional deficit was 94.1 ± 17.7 mm happened September basin. LSMs exhibit similar spatiotemporal characteristics but with smaller magnitudes. Administration agrees well terms their distributions. These three independent indicators together identify event, providing us understanding it. budget analysis demonstrates precipitation second half main reason for mainly due over which closely associated anomalous cyclonic circulation western Pacific.