Historical Dataset of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in China (1951–2020)

The data were sourced from 700 benchmark ground observation stations or automatic stations covering most of the country. Precipitation data from 1951 to 2020 were obtained from the China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System (http://data.cma.cn/en) at a monthly timescale and were corrected for missing values using the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) dataset (http://gpcc.dwd.de/). Evapotranspiration data for the same period (1951–2020) were obtained from the global gridded dataset of monthly climate data developed by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU TS v4.06). Finally, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) were computed at multiple timescales (e.g., SPEI-3, -6, -9, and -12 months) using the aforementioned datasets.