摘要
Based on a compilation of historical data of drought disasters in Yan’an Area during Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the temporal change, level and reason of drought disasters were analyzed. The results showed that during 277 years of Ming Dynasty, the drought disasters happened 91 times in Yan’an Area, with average once every 3 years. The drought disaster happened 17, 30, 29 and 15 times for mild, middle, great and serious levels, respectively. The distribution of drought disasters could be divided into four stages: from 1368 to 1420 with low frequency of drought disasters (the first stage); from 1421 to 1520 with high frequency of drought disasters (the second stage); from 1521 to 1617 with low frequency of drought disasters (the third stage); from 1618 to 1644 with high frequency of drought disasters (the forth stage). The results indicated that the climate in the second and fourth stages were obviously drier with decreased precipitation. In the second and fourth stages, there were two sub-stages of extremely dry climate (1480-1499, 1626-1641), in which the precipitation was 200 mm less than that in nowadays.