Abstract: In this paper, the meteorological disaster characteristics and the causes of disaster development in Xinjiang in the past half-century were analyzed with data of 54 weather stations and the meteorological disasters in 1949-2014. The information diffusion method was used to disasters risk assessment for flood, drought, wind, and hail. The results showed that the growth of precipitation is the result of the jointly increasing of rainfall frequency and intensity in Xinjiang, which is the important reason for storm flood increasing. There is significant increasing trend for the affected area of four kinds of disasters as floods, drought, hail, and low temperature. Spatially, the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains and the Ili River Valley have high flood frequency. High frequency droughts occurred more in northern Xinjiang than that in southern Xinjiang. Eastern Xinjiang and southern Xinjiang have more windstorms, and region of West Tianshan Mountains, Ili River Valley, and the western part of the southern slope of Tianshan Mountains have more hail. The risk of drought is the greatest of disasters in Xinjiang, followed by floods and windstorms. The regions with the largest risk degree of hail are mainly in the west of the southern slope of Tianshan Mountains and form the middle and the west of the north slope of Tianshan Mountains. Morlet wavelet analysis results show that since 2000, the 10-years periodic oscillations of all disasters showed increasing trends. The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events impacted relatively on recent drought worsening and the affected farmland area increasing. In addition, the results of circulation factor teleconnection analysis show that northern hemisphere polar vortex area index(VPA) and the Tibetan Plateau High Index(XZH) have significant impact on intensity of meteorological disasters in Xinjiang.

Key words: climate extremes, information diffusion method, meteorological disaster assessment, Xinjiang