Reconstruction and analysis of extreme drought and flood events in the Hanjiang River basin since 1426
- 1Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430070, China
- 2Laboratory for Climate Studies, National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, 100081, China
- 3Center for Chinese Historical Geographical Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
- 4School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430070, China
- 5School of Tourism and Geographical Sciences, Jilin Normal University, Siping, 136000, China
- 1Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430070, China
- 2Laboratory for Climate Studies, National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, 100081, China
- 3Center for Chinese Historical Geographical Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
- 4School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430070, China
- 5School of Tourism and Geographical Sciences, Jilin Normal University, Siping, 136000, China
Abstract. The major droughts and floods in the Hanjiang River basin have a significant impact on the flood prevention and control in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and water resources management in the areas of the South-North Water Diversion Middle Line Project of China. However, there is a lack of understanding of the multi-decadal to century-scale patterns of droughts and floods in the Hanjiang River Basin. Applying the yearly drought and flood grades reconstructed based on historical documents, and the criteria developed for identifying extreme droughts and floods in historical periods, this paper constructs a time series of extreme droughts and floods (i.e., the event with occurrence probability less than 10 % from 1951–2017) in the Hanjiang River basin from 1426–2017. The possible linkages of the extreme droughts and floods with Asian monsoon (i.e., East Asian monsoon and South Asian monsoon), strong ENSO (i.e., El Niño and La Niña) and large volcanic eruptions are also discussed. The results show that there were 45 extreme droughts and 51 extreme floods in the Hanjiang River basin over the past 592 years. The frequency of extreme droughts was high during the 15th century, early 16th century, the 17th, and the 20th centuries, with the 20th century being the highest. For extreme floods, the frequency was high in the 16th century, the 17th century, the 19th century, and the 20th century, with the 19th to 20th centuries being the highest. The 18th century was a common low period of extreme droughts and floods, while the 20th century saw a high frequency of both. When the Asian monsoon is weak, extreme droughts were more likely to occur; and when the Asian monsoon is strong, extreme floods were more likely to occur. Furthermore, on multi-decadal scale, extreme floods were found to become more frequent with the increase in numbers of strong El Niño events and large volcanic eruptions. These results are informative for the study of mechanisms and predictability of decadal to century scale variability of extreme hydro-climatic events in the Hanjiang River basin.
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Xiaodan Zhang et al.
Status: final response (author comments only)
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CC1: 'Comment on cp-2021-43', Shichao Xu, 13 Jun 2021
The object and content of this manuscript are relevant and necessary in the context of global warming and the frequency of extreme disasters. The Hanjiang River is a key control basin for China's South-North Water Transfer Central Project water source area and flood control in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Its changes in precipitation, droughts and floods will have a wide range of socio-economic impacts, and there is an urgent need for research on long time scales of precipitation and drought and flood variability. Nice work. I think the manuscript is well-written and researched; the topic of study and the methods employed are appropriate for Climate of the Past.
Still, I have some small minor suggestion:
-Line 235: “A total of 4328 records of droughts and floods in the HRB from 1426-1950 were collected from the above-mentioned historical documents.” I think it is important to describe exactly which datasets these available drought and flood records come from , so that the reader has a clearer idea of the composition of the sources.
-The few references in English cited in the text are not conducive to scholars from countries other than China to consult the relevant papers, and the number of references in English should be increased.-
AC1: 'Reply on CC1', Xiaodan Zhang, 13 Jun 2021
Dear Xu,
Thank you very much for your interest in our work and for your very constructive comments and suggestions, which are indeed very valuable to improve our work. We will seriously consider your sincere suggestions.
Thank you!
Best wishes,
Xiaodan Zhang
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AC1: 'Reply on CC1', Xiaodan Zhang, 13 Jun 2021
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CC2: 'Comment on cp-2021-43', Junpei Hirano, 29 Jun 2021
Authors highlighted multi-decadal to century-scale variations of
drought and flood events in Hanjiang River basin based on historical documentsI think this manuscript is well organized and topic of this work is important
for understanding long-term variations of extreme events in historical period.This manuscript is worth publishing for Climate of the Past.
As a suggestion, I have some following comments
Figure 1: Author claims that investigating long-term variations in extereme events
within medium to small scale river basin is important due to comprehensive influences,
such as topography and geomophology(P3, line 110-114). Therefore, I think it is better to
show topography of Hanjiang River Basin in this Figure 1. Readers outside of China
are not familir with topography in this area.
Figure 5: Author analyzed correlation between El Nino and extreme floods in Hanjiang River Basin. As authors analyzed long-term(multi-decadal to century-scale) variations, I think it is better to give somme comments on relationship with PDO. Changes in the PDO phase occur on multidecadal, rather than inter-annual timescales. If appropriate proxy for PDO is available, correlation analysis with PDO and could provide more robust results on multi-decadal to century-scale variations on extreme floods.
Figure6: Author showed that large volcanic eruptions may influence occurrence of the extreme floods in Hanjiang River Basin.
I think it is better to explain some possible mechanism for relationship between volcanic eruptions and
occurrence of extreme floods in this area.-
AC2: 'Reply on CC2', Xiaodan Zhang, 01 Jul 2021
Dear Prof. Hirano,
Thank you very much for your interest and comments on our manuscript. You have provided a series of very significant directions for improving this manuscript, and we will carefully consider your sincere suggestions for guidance.
Kind regards,
Xiaodan Zhang -
AC5: 'Reply on CC2', Xiaodan Zhang, 21 Aug 2021
Dear Prof. Hirano,
Thank you for your valuable comment. In the revised version, we will add topographic information to Figure 1 and label the corresponding names included in each representative site. All place names covered in this manuscript will be labeled.
Because of the limited space in this article, the relationship with PDO is expected to be discussed in the future. After considering other experts' comments on section 3.2(ENSO and volcanic eruptions), we decided to move this section to the discussion section and replace section 3.2 with an analysis of the spatial distribution of extreme droughts and floods in the Han River basin. We will also add some words in the discussion section to analyze the relationship between extreme droughts/floods in the Hanjiang River basin and decadal to multi-decadal variability of East Asian summer monsoon.
Thank you again!
Kind regards,
Xiaodan Zhang
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AC2: 'Reply on CC2', Xiaodan Zhang, 01 Jul 2021
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RC1: 'Comment on cp-2021-43', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Jul 2021
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://cp.copernicus.org/preprints/cp-2021-43/cp-2021-43-RC1-supplement.pdf
- AC3: 'Reply on RC1', Xiaodan Zhang, 21 Aug 2021
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RC2: 'Comment on cp-2021-43', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Aug 2021
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://cp.copernicus.org/preprints/cp-2021-43/cp-2021-43-RC2-supplement.pdf
- AC4: 'Reply on RC2', Xiaodan Zhang, 21 Aug 2021
Xiaodan Zhang et al.
Xiaodan Zhang et al.
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