Exploring the Relationship between Rising Temperatures and the Number of Climate-Related Natural Disasters in China

Mingan Zhu and Bihang Fan
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Mingan Zhu: State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, College of Water Resource and Hydropower, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
Bihang Fan: State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, College of Water Resource and Hydropower, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 2, 1-11

Abstract: Warming has strongly influenced the quantity and variability of natural disasters around the globe. This study aims to characterize the varying patterns between rising temperatures and climate-related natural disasters in China from 1951 to 2010. We examined the overall trend in the patterns of an 11-year cycle, and climate-related natural disaster responses to periods of rising and dropping temperature. We used Morlet wavelet analysis to determine the length of a temperature cycle period, and the arc elasticity coefficient to assess the number of climate-related natural disasters in response to the changing temperature. We found that: (1) the overall relationship between temperature and the number of climate-related natural disasters was positive; (2) however, on the cycle level, the pattern of climate-related natural disasters was found to be independent of temperature variation; (3) on the rise-drop level, temperature increases were associated with declines in the number of climate-related natural disasters. Moreover, as temperature decreased, the number of climate-related natural disasters increased substantially, such that temperature had a more considerable influence on the quantity of climate-related natural disasters during the temperature-drop period. Findings in this study can help enhance the dissemination of warning and mitigation efforts to combat natural disasters in the changing climate.

Keywords: climate change; disaster mitigation; elasticity coefficient; time series; varying patterns; wavelet analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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