In recent decades, under the global warming, drought disasters have had a significant impact on society and economy in China, and the intensity and disastrousness of droughts have significant regional characteristics. It is very important to understand the spatial and temporal characteristics of drought disasters and their associated economic losses for future drought loss estimation, regional drought disaster risk management, and drought resource allocation. Therefore, based on meteorological drought composite indexes from 1961 to 2022 and drought disaster loss data from 2001 to 2022 in China (except Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), the spatial and temporal changes of drought disasters and their periodic characteristics were deeply analyzed, and the correlation between drought disasters and economic losses in different provinces was explored. The results show that the drought intensity has interannual and interdecadal trends, the annual average drought intensity exists a two-year oscillation characteristic, and in the monsoon period, the drought intensity shows two significant change cycles of 9 years and 19 years. The drought intensity shows a distribution characteristic of strong in the south and weak in the north, the three strong drought centers in the south are located in the southwest, the middle of Huanghuai and the southeastern of South China. After 2000, the overall crop drought-affected area, the area with no harvest, the affected population and the overall direct economic losses in China show a decreasing trend, but in the northeast and southwest regions the direct economic losses are more prominent. The correlation between drought disasters and direct economic losses in different provinces is different. On the whole, southern regions are more affected by drought, especially in the central part of the Yangtze River Basin, where drought intensity is closely related to economic losses. In addition, the direct economic losses caused by drought in different regions are not only affected by drought intensity and frequency, but also related to crop planting area, drought resistance ability, population and environment.

According to “the Regulations on Monitoring and Evaluation of Regional Important Processes” issued by China Meteorological Administration in 2019, the basic situations of China’s climate and main meteorological disasters in summer 2021 are comprehensively analyzed based on the meteorological observation data of more than 2400 ground stations in China from 1961 to 2021. The results are as follows: (1) In the summer of 2021, both the average temperature and the average precipitation were higher than that in the same period of the previous years. The rainy season in the north started earlier with enhanced intensity, while it delayed in the south with weakened intensity. These two factors, together with the decreased number of landing typhoons, contributed to the fact that the summer precipitation zones dominated North China. (2) In the summer of 2021, China’s climate conditions were generally worse than normal, the situation of meteorological disasters was complicated and severe, accompanied with frequent occurrences of extreme weather and climate composite events, including flood, heat wave and drought, and moreover, the disasters exhibited periodic and regional features. The number of regional rainstorm processes was 4.9 times lower than that in previous summers, but the extremeness was much stronger. North China, Huanghuai, Jianghan and other places have suffered from severe rainstorms and floods consecutively. Regional high temperature occurred frequently and periodically. The number of regional high temperature processes was 3.4 times higher than that in previous summers, which mainly impacted Huanghai, Jiangnan, South China, the east of Northwest China, the west of Inner Mongolia and the south of Xinjiang. Meteorological droughts appeared in the south and the north simultaneously, with significant regional, periodic and compounding characteristics. And the number of regional drought processes was 1.1 times higher than that in previous summers. South China and Northwest China witnessed the compound development of high temperature and drought.