Search

Flooding has been the most severe hazard in China from time immemorial, due to its special geographical, climatic and socio-economic conditions. In recent years, against the background of global climate change and rapid urbanization, extreme hydro-meteorological events have obviously increased in China, in turn affecting the sustainable social and economic development. This paper analyses how modern flood risk management has evolved from the early "build and protect" flood control approach to a broader flood risk management approach by analyzing what has happened in China and the role of major floods in this evolution. The development of flood forecasting models and systems in terms of how they have informed decision-making as flood risk management has evolved over the years. The challenging of recognizing and dealing with forecast uncertainty and flood risk in decision-making is also analyzed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface water, as the largest part of water resources, plays an important role on China's agricultural production and food security. And surface water is vulnerable to climate change. This paper aims to examine the status of the supply reliability of surface water irrigation, and discusses how it is affected by climate change in rural China. The field data we used in this study was collected from a nine-province field survey during 2012 and 2013. Climate data are offered by China's National Meteorological Information Center which contains temperature and precipitation in the past 30 years. A Tobit model (or censored regression model) was used to estimate the influence of climate change on supply reliability of surface water irrigation. Descriptive results showed that, surface water supply reliability was 74% in the past 3 years. Econometric results revealed that climate variables significantly influenced the supply reliability of surface water irrigation. Specifically, temperature is negatively related with the supply reliability of surface water irrigation; but precipitation positively influences the supply reliability of surface water irrigation. Besides, climate influence differs by seasons. In a word, this paper improves our understanding of the impact of climate change on agriculture irrigation and water supply reliability in the micro scale, and provides a scientific basis for relevant policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balancing water allocations in river basins between upstream irrigated agriculture and downstream cities, industry and environments is a global challenge. The effects of changing allocations are exemplified in the arid Hetao Irrigation District on the Yellow River, one of China's three largest irrigation districts. Amongst the many challenges there, the impact of changing climate on future irrigation water demand is an underlying concern. In this paper we analyse trends in local climate data from the late 1950s and consider the implications for irrigation in the Basin. Since 1958, daily minimum temperatures, Tmin in the Basin have increased at three times the rate of daily maximum temperatures, Tmax. Despite this, there has been no significant increases in annual precipitation, P or pan evaporation, Epan. The difference between the increasing trends in Tmax and Tmin means that the average annual diurnal temperature range, DTR, has decreased very significantly, part of a global phenomenon. Hargreaves empirical approach is used to estimate changes in both incoming solar radiation, Rs , and potential evaporation, ET 0. Changes in estimated ET 0 correlated well with changes in measured pan evaporation, Epan. Paradoxically, the estimated decreasing trend in Rs does not correspond to a significant decreasing trend in Epan. Implications of changing climate on water use and soil salinity in the Basin are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change. The ability to cope with climate change varies from region to region, resulting the difference among its effects on fragility. In this paper, we focus on figuring out how the climate change influences the state’s fragility. First, we build Multilevel Fuzzy Mathematic Appraisement Model to assess the grade of the fragility. Then we identify the climate change as an indirect indicator through studying and discussing. Furthermore, after conducting Multiple Linear Regression Models between quantified climate index and twelve factors, we select the indicators that is relevant to climate change to measure the effect of climate change. Then, apply our model to the countries we choose--Sudan and India. We figure out climate change will increase the fragility index by affecting the economy, brain drain and state legitimacy of Sudan, then we quantize the growth by the multiple liner regression equation. For India, we find that when the temperature raise 1.6°C or the fragility index reach 90, India will become fragile. Then we predict by Back-Propagation neural network, finding that it is hard for India to be fragile within 100 years. Additionally, we apply our model to China, finding that its fragility index decreased with its intervention by decreasing most indicator index. Besides, we measure the total cost of intervention by Markal―Macro Model, getting that the total cost takes up 4% of GDP. Finally, because the indicators affecting the fragility of the cities is different from these affecting states, we modified it by altering the indicators we considered to apply in a small “state”, so it could be effective for cities to reflect the climate change impact on fragility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the impacts by climate changes and human activities are intensified, variability may occur in river's annual runoff as well as flood and low water characteristics. In order to understand the characteristics of variability in hydrological series, diagnosis and identification must be conducted specific to the variability of hydrological series, i.e., whether there was variability and where the variability began to occur. In this paper, the mainstream of Yangtze River was taken as the object of study. A model was established to simulate the impounding and operation of upstream cascade reservoirs so as to obtain the runoff of downstream hydrological control stations after the regulation by upstream reservoirs in different level years. The Range of Variability Approach was utilized to analyze the impact of the operation of upstream reservoirs on the variability of downstream. The results indicated that the overall hydrologic alterations of Yichang hydrological station in 2010 level year, 2015 level year and the forward level year were 68.4, 72.5 and 74.3% respectively, belonging to high alteration in all three level years. The runoff series of mainstream hydrological stations presented variability in different degrees, where the runoff series of the four hydrological stations including Xiangjiaba, Gaochang and Wulong belonged to high alteration in the three level years; and the runoff series of Beibei hydrological station in 2010 level year belonged to medium alteration, and high alteration in 2015 level year and the forward level year. The study on the impact of the operation of cascade reservoirs in Upper Yangtze River on hydrological variability of the mainstream had important practical significance on the sustainable utilization of water resources, disaster prevention and mitigation, safe and efficient operation and management of water conservancy projects and stable development of the economic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outdoor thermal comfort is known to be influenced by adaptations, which leads to different outdoor thermal environment preferences due to climate change by locations. This paper compared the reactions to outdoor thermal environment between local people and tourist in winter in Harbin, which locates in typical severely cold climate zone in China. It was found that, in winter, compared with local people, the thermal comfort vote (TCV) of tourist is more sensitive to thermal sensation vote (TSV), and the satisfaction vote (TSaV) of local people is more sensitive to thermal comfort vote (TCV), which means that, for tourists in Harbin in winter, the change of thermal sensation will strongly influence people's thermal comfort, but the satisfaction vote to the environment will stay in a high level range, and the local people react against that. For the local people, the satisfaction vote (TSaV) and thermal sensation vote (TSV) shows a liner positive relationship, and for the tourists, the satisfaction vote (TSaV) and thermal sensation vote (TSV) shows a quadric relationship, and when TSV equals to -2 (cool), the TSaV of tourists get a peak value, which should be due to people's travel expectations to Harbin climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Beiluohe River basin (BRB) runoff has been experiencing a significant reduction induced by climate change and human activities. This paper considers the impacts of climate change and human activities on runoff reduction. An improved empirical method for climate factors and runoff was developed to study the impacts quantitatively. Meanwhile climate elasticity of runoff, based on the Budyko hypothesis, was also adopted to study the impacts. Using runoff change points, series were divided into natural period (1960-1969) and impacted periods (1970-1994, 1995-2010). Results show that the methods used to quantify the contributions obtained different but close conclusions to one another. For 1970-1994, climate was the primary factor impacting runoff, compared with that for 1960-1969, with the contribution reaching around 70.84-83.42%, which was greater than human activities (16.58-29.16%). For 1995-2010, the role of human activities strengthened with the contribution around 62.58-65.07%, greater than climate changes, around 34.93-37.42%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of climate change, the precipitation of the Haihe River basin undergoes significant changes. Based on the daily precipitation data from 58 stations over 53 years in and around Haihe River basin, the spatial and temporal variation of precipitation was analysed by the M-K test method using the ArcGIS platform. The results showed that there is a descending trend in the annual precipitation and after the mutations, 97.9% of the area experiences a precipitation reduction by the amount of 0-200 mm. The proportion of precipitation in the flood season demonstrates a decreasing tendency, in which the proportion of precipitation in July declines significantly. Meanwhile, precipitation in July also experiences a downward tendency and after the mutations, the decrement of precipitation in July amounts to 0-84 mm. However, annual precipitation and the proportion of precipitation in June all experience a rising trend. After the mutations, the added precipitation concentrates in 0-36 mm. With the increase of the proportion of nonflood season precipitation, the precipitation and proportion of precipitation in May both exhibit an increasing tendency. After the mutations, the added value of precipitation concentrates as 0-29 mm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioenergy from crop residues is one of important components of clean energy to adapt climate change. However, it is still uncertain how bioenergy potential from crop residues changes, as well as what deficits exist when offsetting fossil energy consumption. Taking the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China as an instance, bioenergy potential of crop residue was estimated for the period 2001-2010. The deficits between bioenergy from crop residue and fossil energy consumption were assessed to examine their differences. We found that a large amount of cropland, approximately 15% of the total cropland in 2000, was encroached for other uses in this period. The cropland loss reduced the bioenergy of crop residues, at a rate of 4.05 x 1011kJ · year-1, approximately 1.62% of annual average bioenergy from crop residues. In this context, further research and policy are needed to advance sustainability in the YRD in future decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change impact on river runoff was investigated within the framework of the second phase of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP2) using a physically-based land surface model Soil Water - Atmosphere - Plants (SWAP) (developed in the Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and meteorological projections (for 2006-2099) simulated by five General Circulation Models (GCMs) (including GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, and NorESM1-M) for each of four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5). Eleven large-scale river basins were used in this study. First of all, SWAP was calibrated and validated against monthly values of measured river runoff with making use of forcing data from theWATCH data set and all GCMs' projections were bias-corrected to the WATCH. Then, for each basin, 20 projections of possible changes in river runoff during the 21st century were simulated by SWAP. Analysis of the obtained hydrological projections allowed us to estimate their uncertainties resulted from application of different GCMs and RCP scenarios. On the average, the contribution of different GCMs to the uncertainty of the projected river runoff is nearly twice larger than the contribution of RCP scenarios. At the same time the contribution of GCMs slightly decreases with time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A statistical model has been developed for forecasting domestic water demand in Haihe river basin of China due to population growth, technological advances and climate change. Historical records of domestic water use, climate, population and urbanization are used for the development of model. An ensemble of seven general circulation models (GCMs) namely, BCC-CSM1-1, BNU-ESM, CNRM-CM5, GISS-E2-R, MIROC-ESM, PIESM-LR, MRI-CGCM3 were used for the projection of climate and the changes in water demand in the Haihe River basin under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5. The results showed that domestic water demand in different sub-basins of the Haihe river basin will gradually increase due to continuous increase of population and rise in temperature. It is projected to increase maximum 136.22 x 108 m³ by GCM BNU-ESM and the minimum 107.25 x 108 m³ by CNRM-CM5 in 2030. In spite of uncertainty in projection, it can be remarked that climate change and population growth would cause increase in water demand and consequently, reduce the gap between water supply and demand, which eventually aggravate the condition of existing water stress in the basin. Water demand management should be emphasized for adaptation to ever increasing water demand and mitigation of the impacts of environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) is the largest river basin in northern China, which has suffering water scarcity and drought hazard for many years. Therefore, assessments the potential impacts of climate change on the future streamflow in this basin is very important for local policy and planning on food security. In this study, based on the observations of 101 meteorological stations in YRB, equidistant CDF matching (EDCDFm) statistical downscaling approach was applied to eight climate models under two emissions scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) from phase five of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model with 0.25° x 0.25° spatial resolution was developed based on downscaled fields for simulating streamflow in the future period over YRB. The results show that with the global warming trend, the annual streamflow will reduced about 10% during the period of 2021-2050, compared to the base period of 1961-1990 in YRB. There should be suitable water resources planning to meet the demands of growing populations and future climate changing in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China plays a crucial role in efforts to mitigate global climate change. This article compares climate change news stories in Chinese party-sponsored and market-oriented newspapers using the perspective of content diversity. Focusing on the recent years from 2013 to 2015, we content analyzed a total of 329 news articles with regard to frame, source and viewpoints. The results show that market-oriented newspapers had more diverse viewpoints, used more conflict frames and environmental NGO sources. By comparison, party-sponsored newspapers used more political frames, science frames and frames of scientific uncertainty. Overall, newspapers in China tended to use official sources and politicize the issue in a subtle way, and there was a lack of coverage of the science of climate change. Findings suggest that market-oriented newspapers adopted certain Western news values and added diversity to the reporting of climate change in China. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of future climate change on the runoff for the Dongjiang River basin, South China, has been investigated with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). First, the SWAT model was applied in the three sub-basins of the Dongjiang River basin, and calibrated for the period of 1970-1975, and validated for the period of 1976-1985. Then the hydrological response under climate change and land use scenario in the next 40 years (2011-2050) was studied. The future weather data was generated by using the weather generators of SWAT, based on the trend of the observed data series (1966-2005). The results showed that under the future climate change and LUCC scenario, the annual runoff of the three sub-basins all decreased. Its impacts on annual runoff were -6.87%, -6.54%, and -18.16% for the Shuntian, Lantang, and Yuecheng sub-basins respectively, compared with the baseline period 1966-2005. The results of this study could be a reference for regional water resources management since Dongjiang River provides crucial water supplies to Guangdong Province and the District of Hong Kong in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the precipitation stage and water cloud properties was studied in the mid-latitudes using space-borne radar and radiometer data, with a focus on a comparison between continental (over China) and oceanic (over the northwest Pacific) clouds. More specifically, fractional occurrences of the precipitation categories were investigated in terms of two-dimensional representations of cloud parameters, such as combinations of optical depth - effective particle radius, and liquid water path - droplet number density. As a result, systematic changes in the transition regarding pairs of the cloud parameters were well captured for all precipitation categories. The transition pattern was similar for both land and oceanic clouds. Notably, the ranges of all values of cloud parameters (except cloud droplet number density) were considerably larger for oceanic clouds for the precipitating category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]