FEATURES OF DRYNESS AND WETNESS IN GUANGDONG PROVINCE OVER THE PAST FOUR DECADES

Precipitation data from 86 observing Stations for the past four decades (from the first operational use to 1994) are used to study and discuss the character of annually mean distribution in Guangdong. Grades of dryness and wetness on a year-to-year basis are determined and preliminary features of dryness and wetness are discussed for the whole of the province and individual regions according to a 5-grade standard of division. The result has shown that there is on an average a rainfall of 1748 mm per year across the province, with four major centers of maxima (of annual rainfall over 2000 mm) at Enping, Qingyuan, Haifeng and Longmen. For the mean across the province, the years 1959. 1961. 1973. 1975, 1991 are anomalously wet and the years 1956, 1963, 1977 and 1991 are anomalously dry. of them, 1973 is the unusually wet year (with the absolute value of precipitation anomaly over twice as large as the standard deviation) and 1956 and 1963 are the usual dry years. For the occurrence frequency of unusually wetness and dryness over individual river valleys in the province, there are more years of dryness in the valleys of the Xijiang and Dongjiang Rivers. More years of wetness in that of the Jianjiang River, and only years of wetness instead of years of dryness in the valleys of Beijiang and Hanjiang Rivers.