Abstract
Abstract. Geographic and socio-economic factors combined make China particularly vulnerable to droughts. Here we review academic literature to assess publication trends on the topics of drought monitoring and early warning in China, exploring the common themes and recent advances presented. Literature searches for the 1970–2017 period were made for a range of search terms relating to drought monitoring. It was found that publications on these topics started to appear sporadically in 1989 and have increased rapidly since the early 2000s, with the rate of publication increasing over the last eight years. The scope of studies varied, often with the spatial scale considered: at the national scale, studies focused on evaluating existing indices, while new indices were developed and tested at the regional scale – relating, in general, to monitoring agricultural and meteorological droughts. At the catchment scale, novel monitoring techniques were developed, often incorporating other data types such as modelled data or soil moisture measurements. National scale operational drought monitoring in China is currently being improved and updated. However, although operational systems are discussed in the literature, there is a still a disconnect between theory and practice with the most recent advances not yet operationalised. Here, we identify the methods and approaches which can be translated from the experimental case study scale to the national operational scale.
Highlights
Unlike most other natural hazards, droughts can occur in any climatic region, are slow to develop and can affect a large area
The papers reviewed in Barker (2018) aimed to improve drought monitoring and early warning (MEW) through a better understanding of the drought hazard, the use of a new indicator or method, few/if any of the methods presented are used operationally in China (with the exception of Yan et al (2016), the Drought Watch reports are not yet publically available). This suggests that operational China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (Chinese) drought monitoring activities may be written up in the Chinese literature, and/or that there may remain a step of translating drought monitoring research into operational practices and that this research area has been driven by scientific endeavour rather than operational users
Soil moisture observations were used (e.g. Bai et al, 2017; Su et al, 2003), Fluixá-Sanmartín et al (2018) used a catalogue of drought impacts to verify droughts identified from indicator time series, whilst Wang et al (2016) used winter wheat yields to identify the best indicator for agricultural drought monitoring
Summary
Unlike most other natural hazards, droughts can occur in any climatic region, are (often) slow to develop and can affect a large area. The interplay between socio-economic and physical factors (including the spatial distribution of water resources, population and agriculture) means China is vulnerable to droughts. Over the past 60 years, drought affected on average 29 million people and 206 000 km of farmland per year in China (State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters of Ministry of Water Resources China, 2016). There are many severe socio-economic and environmental impacts listed on the Flood and Drought Disaster Bulletin for China each year (e.g. State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters of Ministry of Water Resources China, 2016). Drought management in China (including monitoring activities and the coordination of management and relief efforts) is led by the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (FCDRHs) with support from additional ministries, local government and the FCDRH at various levels (state, provincial, municipal and county).
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