Inter‐Annual Variations of Precipitation Modulate the Dry Spell Length

Dry spell length (DSL), consecutive non‐rainy days between two precipitation events, play an important role in regulating soil moisture dynamics, terrestrial energy exchange as well as vegetation growth. According to the Clausius‐Clapeyron (C‐C) relationship, global warming can result in prolonged DSL. However, usually the amount of precipitation and its characteristics coincidentally varied with the changes of DSL under global warming, it remains unclear how the inter‐annual variation of precipitation interacts with the evolution of dry spells. In this study, the global long‐term in‐situ observation data set of daily precipitation during 1976–2019 was used to examine the spatiotemporal trends of growing season DSL and precipitation. Our results showed that the global mean growing season DSL significantly increased by 0.3 days decade(−1) during 1976–1998 while no significant trend of that was observed during 1999–2019. In contrast, the growing season precipitation (Prec_GS) showed no significant trend in 1976–1998 whereas significant increase trend of that was observed in 1999–2019. To explore the impacts of precipitation on the evolution of dry spells, we examined the relationship between the growing season DSL and Prec_GS. We found that prevalent negative relationship was observed between growing season DSL and Prec_GS in 88% and 86% stations during the period of 1976–1998 and 1999–2019, respectively. Spatially, the mean annual Prec_GS and DSL showed significantly negative relationship, that is, the stations with more precipitation showed shorter DSL in growing season, and vice versa. The changes of mean annual Prec_GS explained 81% spatial variation of growing season DSL. Moreover, during the period of 1999–2019 significant increase of precipitation frequency and decrease of dry day frequency were also observed in addition to the increase of Prec_GS in this period. The decreased dry day frequency further resulted in the decrease of growing season DSL. By excluded the impacts of precipitation, the DSL/Prec_GS ratio showed significant decreasing trend during 1999–2019. Our study suggested that the spatiotemporal variations of DSL were modulated by the variation of precipitation. The impacts of precipitation changes on ecosystem by altering the dry spell evolution should be considered in modeling the terrestrial carbon and hydrological cycling in response to climate changes.