Abstract: Ten provinces in China were chosen to assess the dynamics and impact of agro-meteorological disasters in 1978-2008 by the application of agricultural statistical data on statistical methods, and the spatial risk distribution of agricultural disasters were analyzed. The results show that drought disaster was one of the most important disasters in China; however, a high temporal variation was observed in the frost disaster areas. In terms of spatial variation, the risk of drought disaster in the eastern provinces was higher than that in the western, the northern provinces higher than the southern; high flood disaster risk mainly occurred in the Yangtze River region and the northeastern region in China; Qinghai Province in Tibetan Plateau had a high risk in hail disaster. There were large differences in the risk probabilities of four agro-meteorological disasters in China. The probabilities of drought and flood disasters were much higher than those of frost and hail disasters.

Key words: China, agro-meteorological disaster, disaster area, risk