Yan Chuan, Tian Huidong, Wan Xinru, He Jinxing, Ren Guoyu, Büntgen Ulf, Stenseth Nils Chr, Zhang Zhibin
State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management on Pest Insects and Rodents in Agriculture, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China.
State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystem, Institute of Innovation Ecology and College of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, People's Republic of China.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Feb 17;8(2):200731. doi: 10.1098/rsos.200731.
Climate change may contribute to the spatio-temporal occurrence of disasters. Long-term studies of either homogeneous or heterogeneous responses of historical disasters to climate change are, however, limited by the quality and quantity of the available proxy data. Here we reconstruct spatio-temporal patterns of five types of disasters in China during the period AD 1368-1911. Our analyses of these time series reveal that warmer temperatures decreased the occurrence of disasters in the monsoon-affected parts of central-east China, but it increased the frequency and intensity of disasters along the boundary of arid and humid conditions in parts of southwest and northeast China, probably driven by the interplay among monsoon, westerlies, polar vortex and variation of temperature. Moreover, we show that drought and flood events had cascading effects on the occurrences of locust outbreaks, famine and human epidemics. Our findings suggest that climate can contribute to the spatio-temporal occurrence of disasters, and therefore may contribute to an improvement of China's regional to national risk management of future climate and environmental change.
气候变化可能导致灾害的时空发生。然而，对历史灾害对气候变化的同质或异质响应的长期研究受到可用代理数据的质量和数量的限制。在此，我们重建了公元1368年至1911年期间中国五种灾害的时空模式。我们对这些时间序列的分析表明，气温升高减少了中国中东部受季风影响地区的灾害发生，但增加了中国西南部和东北部部分干旱与湿润条件交界地区灾害的频率和强度，这可能是由季风、西风带、极地涡旋和温度变化之间的相互作用驱动的。此外，我们表明干旱和洪水事件对蝗虫爆发、饥荒和人类流行病的发生具有级联效应。我们的研究结果表明，气候会导致灾害的时空发生，因此可能有助于改善中国从区域到国家层面未来气候和环境变化的风险管理。
