Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, north-east China (1200–2015)

Tang, LingYun; Macdonald, Neil; Sangster, Heather; Chiverrell, Richard; Gaulton, Rachel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1917-2020

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1917-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Droughts over centuries: what can documentary evidence tell...

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1917-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

|

20 Oct 2020

Research article |

| 20 Oct 2020

Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, north-east China (1200–2015)

LingYun Tang, Neil Macdonald, Heather Sangster, Richard Chiverrell, and Rachel Gaulton

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1917-2020-supplement

Data sets

Two Long-Term Instrumental Climatic Data Bases of the People's Republic of China NCAR (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center/Environmental Sciences Division/Oak Ridge National Laboratory/U. S. Department of Energy) https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds578.5/

Short summary

A historical drought series (since 1200 CE) for Shenyang, NE China, shows 20th century droughts comparable in magnitude to recent severe droughts. Drought resilience driven by early 20th century societal/cultural changes reduced loss of life compared with the 1887 and 1891 droughts. A longer temporal analysis from integrated precipitation and historical records shows an earlier onset to droughts. Regional standardised precipitation indices could provide early warnings for drought development.