Drought losses in China might double between the 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C warming

Abstract

SignificanceWe project drought losses in China under global warming of 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C. To assess future drought losses, we project the regional gross domestic product under shared socioeconomic pathways instead of using a static socioeconomic scenario. We identify increasing precipitation and evapotranspiration patterns. With increasing drought intensity and areal coverage across China, drought losses will increase considerably. The estimated losses in a sustainable development pathway at 1.5 °C warming will be 10 times higher than in the reference period 1986–2005 and three times higher than in 2006–2015. Yet, climate change mitigation, limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, can considerably reduce the annual drought losses in China, compared with 2.0 °C warming.

Drought vulnerability among China's ungulates and mitigation offered by protected areas

“…Under intermediate future greenhouse gas emissions, scenarios from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), coupled climate model simulations, suggest that decreased precipitation and/or increased evaporation will cause severe and widespread droughts in the next 30–90 years over many land areas (Dai, ); and most recent projections agree that the warming rate in China will be faster than the global mean (IPCC, ). Increasing intensity and areal coverage of drought was identified across the country at the 1.5°C and 2.0°C global warming, using 22 ensemble runs from 13 global climate models in CMIP5, which could double the current losses of gross domestic products from droughts (Huang et al, ; Su et al, ).…”

Responses of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Productivity to Droughts in China

“…The terrestrial ecosystem productivity (hereafter, TEP) is the fundamental indicator for ecosystem services, and an integrated component of global carbon cycles, biodiversity, and regional food security (e.g., Piao et al, 2005;Zhu and Pan, 2007;Luo et al, 2019) and is generally controlled by many interplaying factors Liu et al, 2019). Under the threats of global warming, both the broadness and devastation of droughts and floods will continue to intensify, which will greatly affect the TEP, especially under long-lasting droughts (e.g., Yu et al, 2007;Doughty et al, 2015;Lei et al, 2015;Huang et al, 2016;Su et al, 2018;Gherardi and Sala, 2019;Xu et al, 2019). Droughts are a comprehensive and frequently occurred natural disaster, involving both precipitation and temperature changes, and they also control the soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit that will greatly influence the plant growth (Eamus et al, 2013).…”

Effect of Fertility Policy Changes on the Population Structure and Economy of China: From the Perspective of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

“…With a continuing warming trend projected in the future, the negative impacts of climate and weather extremes on human beings might increase further (Fischer & Knutti, ). Meanwhile, more socioeconomic sectors will be exposed to extreme events throughout the world (Cai et al, ; Donat et al, ; Field et al, ; Rosenzweig et al, ; Schewe et al, ; Su et al, ). Therefore, studies of changes in the future socioeconomy are as important as the climate projection in quantification of disaster risk and should be of great concern.…”

“…This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Donat et al, 2016;Field et al, 2012;Rosenzweig et al, 2014;Schewe et al, 2014;Su et al, 2018). Therefore, studies of changes in the future socioeconomy are as important as the climate projection in quantification of disaster risk and should be of great concern.…”