Latest news in china flood12/31/2023 ![]() ![]() A 2019 study published in Sustainability examined the impact of large floods on the Chinese manufacturing sector from 2003 to 2010 and found that these events reduced the output of firms by 28 percent annually. A 2018 study published in Nature Climate Change projects that over 20 million additional people will be exposed to flooding annually in China if the global temperature rises 3 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial level.įactories in the flood zone will also be increasingly impacted, along with the global supply of everything from laptops to air conditioners. More analysis would have to be done to determine exactly how climate change factored into this summer’s floods, he said, but 2020’s wet monsoon conditions align with the trends in their study.Īs climate change worsens flooding, a larger swath of China’s population will be vulnerable. “Reaching 1.5 degrees already brings major repercussions in terms of high flows,” said Homero Paltan, a research associate at Oxford University who co-authored the study. Once the temperature is elevated by 2 degrees, that extreme river flow will happen once every 25 to 35 years in China, according to the 2018 study published in Environmental Research Letters. Limiting warming to below 2 degrees Celsius is the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Using climate models, researchers project that the historical 1-in-100 year high river flow will happen once every 50 to 60 years if the global temperature rises 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. ![]() As temperatures rise, extreme rainfall will increase and floods will become more frequent in central and eastern China. The Growing Threat of FloodingĬhina has dealt with flooding throughout its history, but climate change is upping the threat level. Beijing and other parts of northern China are also starting to face heavy rainfall now as the weather front moves north. The flood risk has waned along the Yangtze River, but the season isn’t over-the upper reaches of the river were hit with another round of floods last week. The effect of the floods on people’s livelihoods is still being accounted for, but the direct economic losses were estimated to be $20.7 billion at the end of July. By the end of July, almost 55 million people had been affected across 27 provinces-3.8 million people had evacuated and 158 people were dead or missing, according to China’s Ministry of Emergency Management. Thirty-three rivers recorded record high flows, and the water level in 433 rivers was above the flood control line as of mid-July. The middle and lower basin’s rainfall from June through mid-July was the highest on record since 1961, according to Wang Zhihua, a spokesperson for China’s Meteorological Administration. Starting in June, heavy downpours and floods started hitting provinces in the Yangtze River Basin including Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and Jiangxi. This Summer’s Record-Setting Floodsįlooding is typical in Southern, Central and Eastern China during the meiyu, or “plum rain”-the East Asian wet season that runs from June to August, but this year’s floods have been historic. The government has invested in hulking engineering projects to control the floods, but rapid urbanization, degraded ecosystems, and deep inequities pose major challenges to China’s adaptation. Researchers project that, in terms of damage and the number of people impacted, China is the country most vulnerable to flooding if the temperature rises 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, roughly the warming projected for the end of the century if action isn’t taken to curb global warming.Ĭhina’s flood-prone Yangtze River Basin is densely populated by factories, towns and cities. Lower-income countries like India will have a higher mortality rate from flooding compared to China, according to a 2018 study, but China will also be greatly impacted. ![]() This summer alone, flooding along the Brahmaputra river has displaced about 3 million people in India, and one quarter of Bangladesh is underwater. China shares this fate with many nations: 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to experience greatly increased river flooding if global warming goes unchecked. ![]()
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