Abstract:The Huang-Huai-Hai Plain is the largest winter wheat production region in China, where compound dry-hot events during the spring growth period threaten yield more than either hazard alone, yet their long-term evolution and the exposure of winter wheat remain inadequately quantified. Based on ERA5-Land daily reanalysis data for 1981—2024 and the 30 m annual WheatMapNCP winter wheat maps (2000—2024), compound dry-hot events were identified within the spring growth window of winter wheat using the 3-month standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI-3) and the calendar-day 90th percentile of daily maximum temperature, and annual indices of frequency, duration and intensity were constructed. Their spatiotemporal evolution was characterized with the Theil-Sen slope, the pre-whitened Mann-Kendall test, the Pettitt change-point test and multi-scheme sensitivity experiments, and winter wheat exposure was quantified under the IPCC exposure framework. The results showed that the wheat-area-weighted regional frequency was increased from 1.52 d in 1981—2002 to 4.01 d in 2003—2024 (about 2.6-fold), with a Theil-Sen slope of about 0.9 d/(10a) and a change point in 1999, and the trend direction remained unchanged under nine threshold combinations and alternative drought components. The intensification was mainly driven by warming-induced shifts of the marginal distributions of heat and drought: March—June reference evapotranspiration was increased significantly by 7.73 mm/(10a) and contributed 57.5% of the trend in the water deficit, whereas the heat-drought dependence amplification factor showed no significant trend. Compound dry-hot events were more frequent in the south than that in the north, and the area with a detectable intensifying trend was concentrated in the central-southern wheat belt;about 3.34×10^6 hm^2 (18%) of the 1.863×10^7 hm^2 of winter wheat in 2024 lay within this intensifying area, and the frequency-weighted hazard exposure rose from 6.50×10^7 hm^2·d in 2000—2011 to 8.37×10^7 hm^2·d in 2012—2024 without reaching statistical significance. At the national scale, the anomaly of compound dry-hot frequency was significantly negatively correlated with the detrended relative anomaly of wheat yield (r=-0.33), providing directional evidence from the production side. The central-southern wheat belt, where hazard and exposure overlap, was the priority area for stress-resistant disaster mitigation and adaptation planning, and these results can provide a basis for such measures.