Assessing climate risk related to precipitation on cultural heritage at the provincial level in China

Abstract

Variation in the physical and chemical environment driven by climate change poses severe threats to the world cultural heritage. Assessing climate risk of cultural heritage is significant to their protection, especially for countries such as China which has a long history and a large amount of cultural heritage. In the study, we employ the risk assessment framework proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess quantitatively the long-term precipitation-related climate risk of cultural heritage at the provincial level in China. The cultural heritage is divided into 5 categories based on material and cultural characteristics: ancient culture sites, ancient tombs, ancient architectural structures, cave temples and stone carvings, and the modern and contemporary historic sites; and the future climate is projected to 2099 under the RCP-4.5 scenario. The results show that the risk of 5 categories of heritage varies considerably. The overall risk of the ancient culture sites and ancient tombs is significantly higher than that of the other 3 categories of heritage due to the vulnerable materials and old age. Spatially, the central regions of China face the highest overall climate risk due to the high hazard and exposure, followed by the eastern regions and the western regions. There are small regional differences in the risk of the ancient tombs while significant regional differences in the risk of the ancient architectural structures. To mitigate the climate risk of cultural heritage, the study highlights the key regions and the corresponding categories of heritage as well as strategies for prioritizing cultural heritage protection.