Abstract:We estimated the terrestrial water storage(TWS) variation of Yangtze from CSR and JPL Mascon solutions, CSR and JPL spherical harmonic (SH) solutions and level-3 products and then calculated the uncertainties of these solutions by the generalized three-cornered hat method. Then evaluated the precipitation variation based on global precipitation measurement (GPM) product. This study also introduced water storage deficit index (WSDI) to analyse the spatial and temporal feature of drought events of Yangtze, compared with scPDSI (self-calibrated Palmer drought severity index). The results showed that: Mascon solution’s uncertainty is less than SH and the uncertainty of JPL_M, CSR_M, CSR_L3, JPL_L3, CSR_SH and JPL_SH is 3.51 mm, 3.78 mm, 5.45 mm, 9.87 mm, 9.12 mm, 10.71 mm, respectively; Precipitation, which shows significant seasonal variation as well as TWS, with correlation coefficients 0.67, is the important trigger of TWS change in Yangtze; We detected six drought events in Yangtze based on WSDI from 2003-01 to 2014-12, with the longest duration of 24 month starting from 2003-02. 2006 summer and 2011 spring experienced the severest droughts with intensity of 2.15 and 1.97, respectively . Spatial distribution of mean WSDI in Yangtze indicated that the drought, starting from 2006-07 to 2007-06, almost hit all the region of Yangtze basin while the drought that began in 2011-03 to 2011-11 appeared in downstream, midstream and northwest upstream of Yangtze basin.