Spatio-temporal prediction of meteorological drought and analysis of influencing factors in Southwest China based on a CNN-LSTM model

doi:10.11755/j.issn.1006-7639-2026-03-0349

Abstract

Abstract:

Southwest China is characterized by complex topography, diverse climatic conditions, and frequent drought events. To improve the representation of spatiotemporal characteristics in drought prediction, this paper developed a coupled Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short-Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) model using precipitation, air temperature, total solar radiation, wind speed, and other factors as inputs. The model was employed to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and driving mechanisms of meteorological drought in Southwest China and project drought conditions in 2030. The results indicate that the CNN-LSTM model effectively captures the spatiotemporal variability of drought and exhibits high predictive accuracy, with a mean absolute error of approximately 0.17. Meteorological drought in Southwest China is jointly influenced by precipitation, air temperature, wind speed, and total solar radiation. The projected results for 2030 suggest that drought conditions are likely to expand toward low-hill and plain regions, accompanied by an overall increase in drought severity.

Key words: Southwest China, meteorological drought, multi-driver factors, deep learning, CNN-LSTM model

摘要：

中国西南地区地形复杂、气候差异显著，干旱频发。针对传统干旱预测方法对时空特征刻画能力不足的问题，本文以降水、气温、太阳辐射总量、风速等因子为输入，构建卷积神经网络（Convolutional Neural Networks，CNN）与长短期记忆网络（Long Short-Term Memory，LSTM）耦合模型，对西南地区气象干旱时空演变特征及其驱动机制进行分析，并开展2030年干旱情景预测。结果表明：CNN-LSTM耦合模型能够较好表征干旱时空变化特征，预测结果与观测值具有较高一致性，平均绝对误差约为0.17；降水、气温、风速以及太阳辐射总量等因子共同影响西南地区干旱；2030年西南地区干旱呈向低山丘陵和平原地区扩展的趋势，整体干旱程度进一步增强。

关键词: 西南地区, 气象干旱, 多驱动因素, 深度学习, CNN-LSTM模型

CLC Number:

P426.616

TANG Ning, LI Jinne, SHI Yan, LI Jue, BAI Tao. Spatio-temporal prediction of meteorological drought and analysis of influencing factors in Southwest China based on a CNN-LSTM model[J]. Journal of Arid Meteorology, 2026, 44(3): 349-357.

汤宁, 李进讷, 石艳, 李珏, 白滔. 基于CNN-LSTM模型的西南地区气象干旱时空预测与影响因素分析[J]. 干旱气象, 2026, 44(3): 349-357.

Figures/Tables 8

Fig.1 Overview of Southwest China

Fig.2 The framework diagram of the CNN-LSTM model

Fig.3 Relative contribution of non-meteorological factors (a) and meteorological factors (b) to drought prediction in Southwest China from 2001 to 2021

Fig.4 Loss (a) and MAE (b) variation during model training

Fig.5 The temporal variations of observed and CNN-LSTM-predicted SPEI in the training set (a) and test set (b) over Southwest China

Fig.6 The temporal variation of CNN-LSTM-predicted SPEI over Southwest China from 2001 to 2030

Fig.7 Spatial distributions of observed (a) and CNN-LSTM-predicted (b) SPEI over Southwest China in 2021

Fig.8 Spatial distribution of CNN-LSTM-predicted SPEI over Southwest China in 2030

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