旱灾
hàn zāi · HSK 7
drought
☀️🌵 旱灾 = 旱 (drought/dry) + 灾 (disaster) = a drought disaster
旱 means dry or rainless; 灾 is the general word for disaster or calamity (also in 火灾 fire, 水灾 flood). Stack them and you get the natural calamity of a long dry spell: drought.
旱 — sun 日 on top + 干 gān (phonetic, also 'dry')
A semantic-phonetic compound: 日 (sun) gives the meaning of dry, scorching weather, while 干 supplies the sound (gān → hàn) and reinforces the idea of dryness. The character has long meant 'drought' or 'dry spell,' as when the sun bakes the land and no rain falls.
灾 — roof 宀 + fire 火
灾 is an associative compound showing fire (火) under a roof (宀), depicting a house on fire — the original meaning of 'disaster' or 'calamity'. An older variant 災 added 巛 (flooding water) above 火, combining flood and fire as twin disasters. The modern simplified form keeps just the house-fire image.