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The bioeconomy model provides an alternative view of global economic systems by putting sustainable practices combined with digital approaches at the forefront to tackle issues such as climate change. To address this new business trends, financial institutions began to set up the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business units to evaluate their business strategies. This paper is aimed at examining the nonfinancial effect created by the digital transformation (DT) activities, highlighting the role of enterprise heterogeneity after the implementation of Environmental Protection Law (EPL) in China. We employ the panel data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, selecting DT and ESG indicators as the important representations of "Industry 5.0." Our empirical results demonstrate a positive impact of EPL on the ESG performance in sight of resource enterprises (REs), environmental enterprises (EEs), and polluting enterprises (PEs), but a negative impact of EPL on the DT indicators among those environmental related industries. Additional causal relationship regression reveals that enterprise DT has an intrinsic promoting effect on the ESG performance, emphasizing on the high risk of digitization process being the shock transmitters to enterprise nonfinancial indices. Notably, the connectedness of environmental policy illustrates dynamic patterns by parallel trend test and propensity score matching (PSM) DID regression. This paper is prone to benefit lawmakers, regulators, and firm executives responsible for analyzing and assessing enterprise digitization behavior by exploring the influence of macrolevel environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most significant global challenge is global climate change; carbon emission reduction and carbon neutralization are the last way to solve global climate change. Achieving carbon neutrality will significantly impact the global economy and the national economy. The "dual carbon goals" proposed by China will also substantially impact the global economy and regional economic development. Focusing on regional economic development, achieving carbon neutrality is not only an opportunity for regional economic development but also a challenge. To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, there must be institutional innovation and management innovation, which will provide new opportunities for balanced development among regions. With the development of inclusive finance, financial services for many disadvantaged groups and small and medium-sized enterprises have been further developed, thereby promoting economic development. With the development of Internet finance, big data, cloud computing, and other technologies, the development of inclusive finance, etc., the concept has also emerged. However, due to the short time of digital financial inclusion, the imperfect regulatory system, and the low degree of public participation, it is worth investigating whether the development of digital financial inclusion has a catalytic effect on the improvement of economic growth. Using the data of 31 provinces to build a panel regression model, this paper studies the market development, the development degree of digital financial inclusion, and the impact of digital financial inclusion on the relationship between factor markets and product markets and regions from the perspective of factor markets and product markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reinvestigated the climate-crop yield relationship with the statistical model at crops' growing stage scale. Compared to previous studies, our model introduced monthly climate variables in the production function of crops, which enables separating the yield changes induced by climate change and those caused by inputs variation and technique progress, as well as examining different climate effects during each growing stage of crops. By applying the fixed effect regression model with province-level panel data of crop yields, agricultural inputs, and the monthly climate variables of temperature and precipitation from 1985 to 2015, we found that the effects of temperature generally are negative and those of precipitation generally are positive, but they vary among different growth stages for each crop. Specifically, GDDs (i.e., growing degree days) have negative effects on spring maize's yield except for the sowing and ripening stages; the effects of precipitation are negative in September for summer maize. Precipitation in December and the next April is significantly harmful to the yield of winter wheat; while, for the spring wheat, GDDs have positive effects during April and May, and precipitation has negative effects during the ripening period. In addition, we computed climate-induced losses based on the climate-crop yield relationship, which demonstrated a strong tendency for increasing yield losses for all crops, with large interannual fluctuations. Comparatively, the long-term climate effects on yields of spring maize, summer maize, and spring wheat are more noticeable than those of winter wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is one of the defining challenges facing the planet. Voluntary forest carbon offset project which has the potential to boost forest carbon storage and mitigate global warming has aroused the global concern. The objective of this paper is to model the game situation and analyze the game behaviors of stakeholders of voluntary forest carbon offset projects in China. A stakeholder model and a Power-Benefit Matrix are constructed to analyze the roles, behaviors, and conflicts of stakeholders including farmers, planting entities, communities, government, and China Green Carbon Foundation. The empirical analysis results show that although the stakeholders have diverse interests and different goals, a win-win solution is still possible through their joint participation and compromise in the voluntary forest carbon offset project. A wide governance structure laying emphasis on benefit balance, equality, and information exchanges and being regulated by all stakeholders has been constructed. It facilitates the agreement among the stakeholders with conflicting or different interests. The joint participation of stakeholders in voluntary forest carbon offset projects might change the government-dominated afforestation/reforestation into a market, where all participators including government are encouraged to cooperate with each other to improve the condition of fund shortage and low efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now common knowledge that many water resources stresses relate to access to water within a basin. Yi River Basin, a typical river basin characterized by intensive agricultural processes, significant population growth, and water management, has been undergoing grave water problems. In this paper, the long-term trend of precipitation and streamflow in Yi River Basin, from 1964 to 2010, was investigated via Mann-Kendall test. The change point occurred in the year 1965 dividing the long-term series into two periods. Climate elasticity method and linear regression method were implemented to quantify the impact of precipitation and human activities on runoff and presented basically consistent results of the percentage change in an annual runoff for the postchange period. The results reveal that the decline of annual runoff in postchange period is mainly attributed to precipitation variability of 53.66–58.25% and human activities of 46.34–41.74%, as estimated by climate elasticity method and linear regression method, respectively. This study detected the changes in the precipitation-streamflow relationship and investigated the possible causes in the Yi River, which will be helpful for providing a reference for the management of regional water resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precipitation data from 30 stations in the Huaihe River basin (HRB), a climatic transitional zone in east China, were used to investigate the spatiotemporal variability and trends of extreme precipitation on multitimescales for the period 1961–2010. Results indicated that (1) the spatial pattern of the annual precipitation, rainy days, extreme precipitation, and maximum daily precipitations shows a clear transitional change from the south (high) to the north (low) in the HR; it confirmed the conclusion that the HRB is located in the transitional zone of the 800 mm precipitation contour in China, where the 800 mm precipitation contour is considered as the geographical boundary of the south and the north. (2) Higher value of the extreme precipitation intensity mainly occurs in the middle of the east and the central part of the basin; it reveals a relatively distinct west-east spatial disparity, and this is not in line with the spatial pattern of the extreme precipitation total, the sum of the precipitation in 95th precipitation days. (3) Annual precipitation of 22 stations exhibits increasing trend, and these 22 stations are located from the central to the northern part. There is no significant trend detected for the seasonal precipitation. The summer precipitation exhibits a larger change range; this might cause the variation of the flood and drought in the HBR. However, the increasing trend in winter precipitation may be beneficial to the relief of winter agricultural drought. Rainy days in 12 stations, mostly located in and around the central northeastern part, experienced significant decreasing trend. Extreme precipitation days and precipitation intensity have increasing trends, but no station with significant change trend is detected for the maximum precipitation of the basin. (4) The spatiotemporal variability in the HRB is mainly caused by the geographic differences and is largely influenced by the interdecadal variations of East Asian Summer Monsoon in eastern China. The output of this paper could provide references for the practical decision making and integrated basin management of Huaihe River basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), the present paper analyzed the nonlinearity and fractal properties of tree-ring records from two types of trees in northwestern China, and then we disclosed climate change characteristics during the past 500 years in this area. The results indicate that climate change in northwestern China displayed a long-range correlation (LRC), which can exist over time span of 100 years or longer. This conclusion provides a theoretical basis for long-term climate predictions. Combining the DFA results obtained from daily temperatures records at the Xi’an meteorological observation station, which is near the southern peak of the Huashan Mountains, self-similarities widely existed in climate change on monthly, seasonal, annual, and decadal timescales during the past 500 years in northwestern China, and this change was a typical nonlinear process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal flood regimes have been irreversibly altered by both climate change and human activities. This paper aims to quantify the impacts of multiple factors on delta flood. The Pearl River Delta (PRD), with dense river network and population, is one of the most developed coastal areas in China. The recorded extreme water level (m.s.l.) in flood season has been heavily interfered with by varied income flood flow, sea-level rise, and dredged riverbeds. A methodology, composed of a numerical model and the index R, has been developed to quantify the impacts of these driving factors in the the PRD. Results show that the flood level varied 4.29%–53.49% from the change of fluvial discharge, 3.35%–38.73% from riverbed dredging, and 0.12%–16.81% from sea-level rise. The variation of flood flow apparently takes the most effect and sea-level rise the least. In particular, dense river network intensifies the impact of income flood change and sea-level rise. Findings from this study help understand the causes of the the PRD flood regimes and provide theoretical support for flood protection in the delta region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk assessment of drought disaster is necessary for the sustained agriculture development under the background of global climate change, and, meanwhile, it is an urgent scientific issue needed to be solved in agricultural risk assessment discipline. In this paper, collecting the areas covered by drought disasters, areas affected by drought disasters, areas with no harvest by drought disasters, areas planted, and yield per unit area data, agricultural drought disasters losses of the southern five provinces in China were calculated. The best probability density function was obtained according to the goodness of fit test results. Then, the value at risk (VaR) from financial market risk research method was used to the effective measure of agricultural drought risk. The results show that, in southern five provinces of our research region, risk of agricultural drought disaster in Yunnan and Guizhou is greater than other three provinces. In the scenario of 50 years and 100 years for a return, the crop loss caused by drought will reach 13.6% and 17.4% in Yunnan province, and the crop loss will be more serious in Guizhou province and be up to 15.3% and 18.1%. The above results can provide multifaceted information about drought risk that can help to guide management of drought disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a serious threat to humankind. As broad public participation is required in climate change mitigation efforts, it is critical to understand how the public talk about climate change on social media. This study sets out to increase the understanding of Chinese public awareness of climate change, as well as explore the potential and limitations of social media for public engagement on climate change issues. It examines the Chinese public's discussion about climate change on social media Weibo during the last six years through data mining and text analysis. The analyses include volume analysis, keyword extraction, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis. The results indicate three main aspects of public awareness and concern regarding climate change. First, public awareness of climate change is growing in China. Second, the sentiment analysis shows that the general sentiment toward climate change is becoming more positive over time. Third, based on keyword extraction and topic modeling, the discussion on climate change shows a top-down perspective, an optimistic economic perspective, and a preference for celebrity content. The study provides a comprehensive picture of Chinese social media users' views on climate change issues, based on large-scale research data. It contributes to a better understanding of what Chinese people think about climate change on social media generally. These findings may provide government and environmental organizations with valuable insights for better climate change campaigns on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In ecologically fragile areas with arid climate, such as the Heihe River Basin in northwestern China, sustainable social and economic development depends largely on the availability and sustainable uses of water resource. However, there is more and more serious water resource shortage and decrease of water productivity in Heihe River Basin under the influence of climate change and human activities. This paper attempts to identify the severe water scarcity under climate change and presents possible solutions for sustainable development in Heihe River Basin. Three problems that intervened land use changes, water resource, the relevant policies and institutions in Heihe River basin were identified, including (1) water scarcity along with serious contradiction between water supply and demand, (2) irrational water consumption structure along with low efficiency, and (3) deficient systems and institutions of water resource management along with unreasonable water allocation scheme. In this sense, we focused on reviewing the state of knowledge, institutions, and successful practices to cope with water scarcity at a regional extent. Possible solutions for dealing with water scarcity are explored and presented from three perspectives: (1) scientific researches needed by scientists, (2) management and institution formulation needed by governments, and (3) water resource optimal allocation by the manager at all administrative levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the problems of climate change and energy security, Chinese government strived to develop renewable power as an important alternative of conventional electricity. In this paper, the learning curve model is employed to describe the decreasing unit investment cost due to accumulated installed capacity; the technology diffusion model is used to analyze the potential of renewable power. Combined with the investment cost, the technology potential, and scenario analysis of China social development in the future, we develop the Renewable Power Optimization Model (RPOM) to analyze the optimal development paths of three sources of renewable power from 2009 to 2020 in a cost-effective way. Results show that (1) the optimal accumulated installed capacities of wind power, solar power, and biomass power will reach 169000, 20000, and 30000MWin 2020; (2) the developments of renewable power show the intermittent feature; (3) the unit investment costs of wind power, solar power, and biomass power will be 4500, 11500, and 5700 Yuan/KW in 2020; (4) the discounting effect dominates the learning curve effect for solar and biomass powers; (5) the rise of on-grid ratio of renewable power will first promote the development of wind power and then solar power and biomass power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, the top CO2 emitters were China, United States, and European Union. The rapid growing economy and the heavy reliance on coal in China give rise to the continued growth of CO2 emission, deterioration of anthropogenic climate change, and urgent need of new technologies. Carbon Capture and sequestration is one of the effective ways to provide reduction of CO2 emission and mitigation of pollution. Coal-fired power plants are the focus of CO2 source supply due to their excessive emission and the energy structure in China. And over 80% of the large CO2 sources are located nearby storage reservoirs. In China, the CO2 storage potential capacity is of about 3.6 × 109 t for all onshore oilfields; 30.483 × 109 t formajor gas fields between 900m and 3500m of depth; 143.505 × 109 t for saline aquifers; and 142.67 × 109 t for coal beds. On the other hand, planation, soil carbon sequestration, and CH4-CO2 reforming also contribute a lot to carbon sequestration. This paper illustrates some main situations about CO2 sequestration applications in China with the demonstration of several projects regarding different ways of storage. It is concluded that China possesses immense potential and promising future of CO2 sequestration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variability and availability of water resources under changing environment in a regional scale have been hot topics in recent years, due to the vulnerability of water resources associated with social and economic development. In this paper, four subbasins in the Dongjiang basin with a significant land use change were selected as case study. Runoffs of the four subbasins were simulated using the SCS monthly model to identify the quantitative impacts of land use and climate change. The results showed that (1), in the Dongjiang basin, temperature increased significantly, evaporation and sunlight decreased strongly, while precipitation showed a nonsignificant increase; (2) since the 1980s, land uses in the Dongjiang basin have experienced a significant change with a prominent increase inurbanareas, amoderate increase in farmlands, anda greatdecrease inforest areas; (3) the SCSmonthlymodel performed well in the four subbasins giving that the more significant land use change in each subbasin, the more runoff change correspondingly; (4) overall, runoff change was contributed half and half by climate change and human activities, respectively, in all the subbasins, in which about 20%~30% change was contributed by land use change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rainfall is a complexity dynamics process. In this paper, our objective is to find the evidence of self-organized criticality (SOC) for rain datasets in China by employing the theory and method of SOC. For this reason, we analyzed the long-term rain records of five meteorological stations in Henan, a central province of China. Three concepts, that is, rain duration, drought duration, accumulated rain amount, are proposed to characterize these rain events processes. We investigate their dynamics property by using scale invariant and found that the long-term rain processes in central China indeed exhibit the feature of self-organized criticality. The proposed theory and method may be suitable to analyze other datasets from different climate zones in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming and climate anomalies have attracted worldwide attention. The study of global climate change has received increasing attention from all countries and fields worldwide. Paleoclimate research is an important way to understand past global change and environmental evolution and to simulate and predict future climate development. A stalagmite ND3 collected in Naduo Cave was used to reconstruct the history of local climate and environmental changes from 0.55 to 5.07 ka BP based on the data of 13 230Th ages and 642 groups of oxygen and carbon stable isotopes. First, according to correlation analysis, δ18O and δ13C were significantly correlated (correlation coefficient r = 0.308, n = 318, P < 0.001) during the 5.07–2.00 ka BP period. However, during the period of 2–0.55 ka BP, there was no significant correlation P > 0.05 . The δ18O and δ13C data indicate that the climatic environment changed asynchronously during the period of 2.00–0.55 ka BP. During the period of 5.07–2.00 ka BP, the influence of human activities was weak, and δ18O and δ13C indicate similar climatic and environmental conditions, both of which changed in the same direction (positive correlation). In other words, when δ18O was positive, it indicated weak summer monsoons and lower precipitation, which led to declines in vegetation, weakened biological activity, and decreased soil CO2 and positive δ13C. The reverse patterns were also true. Since 2.0 ka BP, the intensity of human activities and the transformation and influence of surface vegetation have increased, and native vegetation has been destroyed in large quantities. Therefore, the climatic and environmental significance indicated by δ13C and δ18O has been well demonstrated. Second, the δ18O records showed that stalagmite ND3 responded to the weak monsoon drought events of 4.2 ka BP and 2.8 ka BP in the Holocene in a discontinuous deposition manner, which brings up new directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming has increased the chance of concurrent extreme climate events (weather or climate events that are rare within their statistical reference distributions in a particular place, such as heat waves, floods, and droughts). Crops grow best within specific temperature intervals, and excessive heat is detrimental to the physiological processes of crops and eventually affects yield levels. Analysing historical changes in concurrent extreme high temperatures is critical to preparing for and mitigating the negative effects of climatic change. The North China Plain (NCP) is the most important wheat production area in China. In this study, the spatiotemporal variations in temperature and heat wave trends in the NCP were analysed. Furthermore, we examined the potential of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) to capture the influence of heat wave impacts on wheat crops in the NCP by comparing satellite remote sensing data of SIF and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and validated ground-based yield data. The results indicate that temperatures and the number of heat wave days in the study region all show increasing trends, especially daily minimum temperature, which has increased by 0.38°C per decade for the past 30 years. Spatially, the southern NCP has suffered greater increasing-temperature trends and more heat wave days than the northern region. Regarding the response of SIF and NDVI to heat waves, SIF can better capture wheat yield decline due to heat waves compared to NDVI; thus, the SIF result indicated more sensitivity to heat waves compared to NDVI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate extremes have attracted widespread attention for their threats to the natural environment and human society. Based on gauged daily precipitation from 1963 to 2016 in four subregions of the Jinsha River Basin (JRB), four extreme precipitation indices developed by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) were employed to assess the spatiotemporal variations of extreme precipitation events. Results show the following: (1) Max one-day precipitation amount (RX1day), max consecutive five-day precipitation amount (RX5day), precipitation on very wet days (R95p), and number of heavy precipitation days (R10mm) showed increasing trends in four subregions except for the decline of R10mm in the southeastern and RX5day in the midsouthern. Extreme precipitation has become more intense and frequent in most parts of the JRB. (2) In space, the four extreme precipitation indices increased from the northwest to the southeast. Temporal trends of extreme precipitation showed great spatial variability. It is notable that extreme precipitation increased apparently in higher elevation areas. (3) The abrupt change of extreme precipitation in the northwestern, midsouthern, and southeastern mainly appeared in the late 1990s and the 2000s. For the midnorthern, abrupt change mainly occurred in the late 1980s. This study is meaningful for regional climate change acquaintance and disaster prevention in the JRB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of climate comfort for tourism can provide information for tourists selecting destinations and tourism operators. Understanding how climate conditions for tourism evolve is increasingly important for strategic tourism planning, particularly in rapidly developing tourism markets like China in a changing climate. Multidimensional climate indices are needed to evaluate climate for tourism, and previous studies in China have used the much criticized "climate index" with low resolution climate data. This study uses the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) and daily data from 775 weather stations to examine interregional differences in the tourist climate comfortable period (TCCP) across China and summarizes the spatiotemporal evolution of TCCP from 1981 to 2010 in a changing climate. Overall, most areas in China have an "excellent" climate for tourism, such that tourists may visit anytime with many choices available. The TCCP in most regions shows an increasing trend, and China benefits more from positive effects of climate change in climatic conditions for tourism, especially in spring and autumn. These results can provide some scientific evidence for understanding human settlement environmental constructions and further contribute in improving local or regional resilience responding to global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of global climate change and urbanization, waterlogging disasters have occurred frequently around the world, and deep foundation pit projects with lower terrain suffer even more. This study puts forward a method for the waterlogging risk assessment of deep foundation pit projects via the combination of a projection pursuit model, particle swarm optimization, and an interpolation algorithm. First, through a comprehensive analysis of the water circulation process in waterlogging and the characteristics of deep foundation pit projects, a risk index system with 11 indicators is identified and constructed. Then, a projection pursuit model optimized by particle swarm optimization is leveraged to determine the weights of the indicators and the best projection values of evaluation objects, and the mathematical function between the best projection values and the risk levels is constructed by an interpolation algorithm. Finally, three deep foundation pit projects of the Chengdu Metro Line 11 in China are selected as case studies. The results demonstrate that the frequency of storms, intensity of rainfall, preparation of emergency rescue plans, and proportion of older workers have the greatest impacts on waterlogging risk in deep foundation pits. The risk ranking of the case studies is found to be consistent with the actual situations, which proves the objectivity and effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, 2 m air temperature data from 24 meteorological stations in the Qilian Mountains (QLM) are examined to evaluate ERA-Interim reanalysis temperature data derived from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the period of 1979–2017. ERA-Interim generally captures the monthly, seasonal, and annual variation very well. High daily correlations ranging from 0.956 to 0.996 indicate that ERA-Interim captures the daily temperature observations very well. However, an average root-mean-square error (RMSE) of ±2.7°C of all stations reveals that ERA-Interim should not be directly applied at individual sites. The biases are mainly attributed to the altitude differences between ERA-Interim grid points and stations. The positive trend (0.457°C/decade) is significant over the Qilian Mountains based on the 1979–2017 observations. ERA-Interim captures the warming trend very well with an increase rate of 0.384°C/decade. The observations and ERA-Interim both show the largest positive trends in summer with the values of 0.552°C/decade and 0.481°C/decade, respectively. We conclude that in general ERA-Interim captures the trend very well for observed 2 m air temperatures and ERA-Interim is generally reliable for climate change research over the Qilian Mountains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has become a global concern for scientists as it is affecting almost every ecosystem. Larix gmelinii and Betula platyphylla are native and dominant forest species in the Daxing'anling Mountains of Inner Mongolia, playing a major role in carbon sequestration of this region. This study was carried out to assess the effect of climate variables including precipitation and temperature on the biomass of Larix gmelinii and Betula platyphylla forests. For this purpose, we used the climate-sensitive stem biomass allometric model for both species separately to find out accurate stem biomass along with climatic factors from 1950 to 2016. A total of 66 random plots were taken to attain the data from this study area. Larix gmelinii and Betula platyphylla stem biomass have a strong correlation with annual precipitation (R2 = 0.86, R2 = 0.71, R2 = 0.79, and R2 = 0.59) and maximum temperature (R2 = 0.76, R2 = 0.64, R2 = 0.67, and R2 = 0.52). However, annual minimum temperature (R2 = 0.58, R2 = 0.43, R2 = 0.55, and R2 = 0.46) and annual mean temperature (R2 = 0.40, R2 = 0.22, R2 = 0.36, and R2 = 0.19) have a relatively negative impact on tree biomass. Therefore, we suggest that both species have a very strong adaptive nature with climatic variation and hence can survive under drought and high-temperature stress climatic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the deepening of climate change and the increasing industrialization in recent years, the problem of air pollution in cities has become increasingly prominent. Based on the data of air pollutants and meteorological elements in Jiangsu Province, China (2013–2017), we analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of air pollution. The results show that the air-quality index (AQI) in Jiangsu Province decreased from 2013 to 2017 and the highest AQI is in winter and the lowest in the summer, while its values in coastal cities of Jiangsu are less than those of inland cities. For the temporal distribution of primary pollutants, PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO present the same trend under seasonal and monthly time scales, i.e., winter is higher and summer is lower; however, the other secondary pollutant, O3, presents opposite characteristics under the same time scale: it has higher concentration levels in summer and lower in winter. For the spatial distribution, PM2.5 and PM10 are in good concord: the higher values are found in the west of Jiangsu Province and lower in the east. For the spatial distribution of NO2, this presents higher concentrations in south and lower concentrations in north according to the position of Yangzi River, while the distribution of O3 concentration is opposite to that of NO2. The meteorological elements selected are related to air pollution, the AQI is significantly negatively correlated with monthly temperature (including average, minimum, and maximum temperatures), monthly average water vapor pressure, monthly precipitation, and monthly sunshine duration; the correlation coefficients are –0.852, –0.846, –0.850, –0.797, –0.727, and –0.599, respectively. As far as the relationships between air pollutions are concerned, there is a significant positive correlation between AQI, PM2.5, PM10, SO2, and NO2, while O3 is remarkably negatively correlated with other pollutants and AQI. The most prominent correlations are distinguished into two groups: one is AQI, PM2.5, and PM10, with correlation coefficients of 0.876 and 0.966, and the other is SO2, NO2, with correlation coefficient of about 0.9. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal and spatial variations in reference evapotranspiration (ET0) and aridity index (AI) can be used as important indexes for understanding climate change and its effects on ecosystem stability. Thus, in this work, we comprehensively investigated 71 meteorological stations in Northeast China from 1965 to 2017 to analyze the spatial-temporal variation and trend of ET0 and AI using the nonparametric Mann–Kendall test, the linear regression, and the Morlet wavelet methods. The results elucidated that ET0 for Northeast China as a whole exhibited a decrease at a rate of −1.97 mm/yr, AI declined at a rate of −0.01/yr during 1965–2017, and approximately 94% stations showed a decrease trend. Spatially, the high values of AI and ET0 were primarily at the western part of the study area except for the Heilongjiang province, and the stations showing low values were mainly distributed in the central and eastern part. The decreasing trends for AI were more obvious in the eastern part compared with the western part over the study region. The abrupt changes in AI occurred in 2005 and 2007, whereas only one abrupt change for ET0 occurred in 1995. For annual ET0, there were periods of 3, 7, 11, and 15 yr, and there existed periods of 1, 7, 11, and 13 yr for annual AI. The correlation coefficients implied wind speed and precipitation were the dominant meteorological factors resulting in the ET0 and AI decrease, respectively. Additionally, the change of the Indian summer monsoon index (ISMI) may also contribute to the weakened AI in the study area. Nevertheless, further investigation is still required to clarify the mechanisms for AI and ET0 variations in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sediment yield of the Yellow River Basin has obviously decreased since the 1980s, and the impacts of precipitation on sediment yield changes have become increasingly important with the global climate change. The spatial and temporal variations in annual precipitation and different classes of precipitation in the Hekouzhen-Longmen region (HLR) in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin were investigated using data collected from 301 rainfall stations from 1966 to 2016. The impacts of precipitation variation on sediment yield were evaluated, and the hydrological modeling method was used to quantitatively assess the attribution of precipitation and other factors to sediment yield changes in the HLR. The results show that the annual precipitation and P10 increased from the northwest to the southeast of the HLR, suggesting it was drier in the northwest region of the HLR. P25 and P50 were mainly concentrated in the northwestern and southwestern parts of the HLR, reflecting that heavy rain was more likely to occur in these regions of the HLR. All of the annual precipitation and different classes of precipitation had no significant changing trends from 1966 to 2016, and the relationship between rainfall and sediment yield obviously changed in 2006. Compared with the average annual mean values from 1966 to 2016, both the annual precipitation and the different classes of precipitation were higher in the HLR during 2007–2016. The sediment yield decrease during 1990–1999 was mainly influenced by precipitation, while other factors were the main driving factor for the sediment yield decrease in the periods of 1980–1989, 2000–2009, and 2010–2016, and other factors have become the dominant driving factors of the sediment yield change in the HLR since 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquaculture is threatened by the climate change which includes changes in temperature, precipitation, drought, storms and floods. The socio-economic impacts of climate change on aquaculture are difficult to assess due to the uncertainties regarding the extent and rate of predicted changes. By including bond indexes as climate change variables, this study constructed a provincial-level panel data set to estimate the profits and productivity of the Chinese aquaculture. Results indicate that aquaculture production has heterogeneous responses to climate change. However, the majority of climate variables, including extreme weather events and long-term climate changes, strongly affect aquaculture profits. Future research needs to focus on designing suitable adaptation measures in an interdisciplinary setting to address the challenges from natural risks and economic volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies the Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model to simulating the land cover under the designed scenarios and then analyzes the effects of land cover conversion on energy flux in the semiarid grassland area of China with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The results indicate that the grassland will show a steadily upgrowing trend under the coordinated environmental sustainability (CES) scenario. Compared to the CES scenario, the rate of increase in grassland cover is lower, while the rate of increase in urban land cover will be higher under the rapid economic growth (REG) scenario. Although the conversion from cropland to grassland will reduce the energy flux, the expansion of urban area and decreasing of forestry area will bring about more energy flux. As a whole, the energy flux of near surface will obviously not change under the CES scenario, and the climate therefore will not be possible to be influenced greatly by land cover change. The energy flux under the REG scenario is higher than that under the CES scenario. Those research conclusions can offer valuable information for the land use planning and climate change adaptation in the semiarid grassland area of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]