Significant increase and escalation of drought-flood abrupt alteration in China's future

Shuai Zheng, Baisha Weng, Wuxia Bi, Denghua Yan, Liliang Ren and Hao Wang

Agricultural Water Management, 2025, vol. 312, issue C

Abstract: Drought-flood abrupt alteration (DFAA) events threaten global food security, exacerbated by global warming, particularly in China. Given this, a more refined and comprehensive analysis of DFAA events in China can provide valuable insights for global mitigation efforts. This study examines the frequency, intensity, and coverage of DFAA events during the historical periods (HIS, 1961–2014) and under future climate projections based on Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs: SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, SSP585, 2015–2100) using a daily-scale determination method. The results revealed that regions with frequent DFAA events also experience higher intensity and broader impact areas. Compared to HIS, DFAA event frequency, intensity, and coverage increased by 31 %, 3 %, and 37 % under SSPs, reaching 7.31 events/year, 1.069, and 0.422 %. Across both HIS and SSPs, the proportions of light (75 %-78 %), moderate (18 %-21 %), and severe (4 %-5 %) DFAA events remained relatively stable. YGP, HHHP, MLYP, NCP, and NASR are the five hotspot areas. Analysis attributes 45 % (P < 0.05) of DFAA frequency variability to drought and flood frequency (74.45 %) and duration (25.55 %). Furthermore, low to medium emission scenarios show significant potential to reduce DFAA occurrence, offering direction to mitigate the impacts of global warming, particularly as mid-latitude regions have emerged as DFAA hotspots over the past 30 years. These findings provide critical insights for countries addressing climate change and ensuring food security.

Keywords: Drought-flood abrupt alteration; Climate change; Shared Socioeconomic Pathways; Food security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377425001635
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:312:y:2025:i:c:s0378377425001635

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2025.109449

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().