Study on spring drought in cold and arid regions based on the ANOVA projection pursuit model.

[Display omitted] • Spring drought factors include snow cover, precipitation, temperature, and soil moisture. • Established a variance analysis projection pursuit model (ANOVA PPM) • ANOVA PPM achieves a balance between overall dispersion and local aggregation. Due to the influence of snow cover and soil freeze–thaw processes in the early spring, the characteristics of spring drought in cold regions are different from those in other regions. This paper takes Qiqihar, a cold and semiarid grain production area in Northeast China, as the study area. Based on factors such as snow cover in the early spring period and precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture during the spring sowing period, a projection pursuit model with analysis of variance (ANOVA PPM) was used to analyze the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of regional spring drought. For the ANOVA PPM, based on the grouping of the projection points, local aggregation is measured by the mean square within groups, and overall dispersion is measured by the mean square between groups, thus achieving comparability and balance between overall dispersion and local aggregation. The spatial analysis of spring drought showed that, from a spatial perspective, there were significant spatial differences in spring drought in different subregions, and spring drought was closely related to latitude, with significant differences occurring at different latitudes. The northern region is relatively light, while the central and southern regions are more severe. From a temporal perspective, there are significant differences in spring droughts between different decades (1980 s, 1990 s, 2000 s and 2010 s). Overall, spring drought first intensifies and then decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]