Past trajectories and future landscapes of urban drought resilience in China

Frequent droughts under global climate change threaten ecological security and sustainable urban development. Drought resilience (DR) denotes the capacity of urban systems to resist, absorb, adapt to, and recover from drought disturbances. This study develops an integrated framework to assess, diagnose, and forecast DR across 288 Chinese cities. Results show that China's DRI-C increased steadily from 2007 to 2021, with an average annual growth rate of 1.38%, but marked regional disparities persisted, with higher DR in eastern coastal areas and lower DR in the northwest. Significant spatial clustering was observed, including high-high (H-H) agglomerations in Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong and low-low (L-L) agglomerations in the North China Plain, Hexi Corridor, and Northeast Plain. Precipitation was the key climatic driver of DR, whereas temperature and wind speed were statistically insignificant in the panel vector auto regression (PVAR) model. By 2050, DRI-C is projected to increase by 16.6% under SSP1-2.6, while showing slightly weaker growth under SSP5-8.5.