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The Taklimakan Desert (TD) is the largest desert in China located in the Tarim Basin (TB) in China’s arid region. This study is a review of the change in precipitation and its extremes since 1961 and the high-impact extreme precipitation events in 2012–2021, particularly in 2021, with a focus on the TD along with the surrounding oases and mountainous regions.The TB has experienced significantly warmer and wetter trends since 1961, and extreme rainfall has increased significantly in the TD and its surrounding areas during the 2000s. In the TB, the year 2021 was identified as the 4th warmest for 1961–2021, and was remembered for unprecedented extreme events. Three high-impact extreme events that occurred in 2021 are highlighted, including extreme heavy rainfall over Hetian in mid-June. The earliest extreme rainfall event occurred over North Bazhou in early spring, and the strongest heavy snowfall over Baicheng in April. In addition, we also discussed the underlying physical mechanisms of extreme events over the TB and proposed novel perspectives and unresolved questions on the sciences of heavy rainfall in arid regions. Our results provide a reference for the physical mechanism, attribution, and high-resolution modeling of extreme events.

Desert locusts are notorious for their widespread distribution and strong destructive power. Their influence extends from the vast arid and semiarid regions of western Africa to northwestern India. Large-scale locust outbreaks can have devastating consequences for food security, and their social impact may be long-lasting. Climate change has increased the uncertainty of desert locust outbreaks, and predicting suitable habitats for this species under climate change scenarios will help humans deal with the potential threat of locust outbreaks. By comprehensively considering climate, soil, and terrain variables, the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model was used to predict the potential habitats of solitary desert locusts in the 2050s and 2070s under the four shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585) in the CMIP6 model. The modeling results show that the average area under the curve (AUC) and true skill statistic (TSS) reached 0.908 ± 0.002 and 0.701, respectively, indicating that the MaxEnt model performed extremely well and provided outstanding prediction results. The prediction results indicate that climate change will have an impact on the distribution of the potential habitat of solitary desert locusts. With the increase in radiative forcing overtime, the suitable areas for desert locusts will continue to contract, especially in the 2070s under the SSP585 scenario, and the moderately and highly suitable areas will decrease by 0.88 × 106 km2 and 1.55 × 106 km2, respectively. Although the potentially suitable area for desert locusts is contracting, the future threat posed by the desert locust to agricultural production and food security cannot be underestimated, given the combination of maintained breeding areas, frequent extreme weather events, pressure from population growth, and volatile sociopolitical environments. In conclusion, methods such as monitoring and early warning, financial support, regional cooperation, and scientific prevention and control of desert locust plagues should be further implemented.