Abstract. The major droughts and floods in the Hanjiang River
Basin, central China, have a significant impact on flood prevention and
control in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and water resources
management in the areas of the South–North Water Diversion Middle Line
Project. However, there is a lack of understanding of the multi-decadal to
centennial-scale patterns of extreme droughts and floods in the area.
Applying the yearly drought and flood records from historical documents and
precipitation data in the period of instrumental measurements, this study
constructs a time series of extreme droughts and floods in the Hanjiang
River Basin from 1426–2017 and analyzes the temporal and spatial
characteristics of the extreme drought and flood event variations. The results
show that there were a total of 45 extreme droughts and 52 extreme floods in the
basin over the past 592 years. Extreme droughts and floods were highly
variable on a multi-decadal to centennial scale, and the frequencies were
higher in the first and last 100 years or so of the study period and
lower in between. Spatially, the frequencies of extreme droughts and floods
were generally higher in the middle and lower reaches than in the upper
reaches. It was also found that there is a good correlation of drought and
flood frequencies between the upper Hanjiang River Basin and North China.
These results are informative for the study of mechanisms and predictability
of multi-decadal to centennial-scale variability of extreme hydroclimatic
events in the river basin.
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