Abstract
The social impact of past climate change is one of the key areas of study relating to global climate change, particularly its ability to provide valuable lessons for dealing with ongoing challenges of global climate change. Drawing on the abundant historical literature, many recent studies have examined the social impacts of climate change in China during the past 2000 years. This paper reviews the main progress of these studies in three parts. First, a concept model based on the food security in relation to global climate change has been constructed, which can then be used to interpret impact-response processes of climate change in the history of China. Second, we derive a methodology for quantifying the impact of historical climate change, drawing on a series of 4 key social and economic sequences at a 10-year resolution. These have been reconstructed based on the semantic differential method over the past 2000 years in China. Third, using a variety of statistical analyses, we update the understanding of climate impacts throughout the history of China. The overall impacts of climate were negative in the cold periods and positive in the warm periods, at decadal to centennial scales during Chinese history. However, the impacts seemed a mixed blessing both in the cold or warm periods. The social-economic development and population growth in warm periods would intensify the natural resource shortage and disequilibria in the human-environment system, especially when encountering abrupt climate changes. Adaptation to adverse climate change could not only help people to avoid hardship whilst maximizing profits, but also expanded the capabilities for the continual development of Chinese civilization.
Highlights
As the most active element in the natural environment, climate change has had wide and profound impacts on human society at multiple temporal and spatial scales, it might not a determinative driving force
This paper summarizes the main findings relating to the impacts of climate change in China during the past 2000 years
Based on long-term and continuous historical literature, this paper summarizes the main impacts of climate change during the past 2000 years in China
Summary
As the most active element in the natural environment, climate change has had wide and profound impacts on human society at multiple temporal and spatial scales, it might not a determinative driving force. The way of climate change impacting society could be summarized through 5 general patterns (Fang et al 2017), including periodic changes (Zhang et al 2005; Lee et al 2008), pulse (Pederson et al 2014), adaptive transition (Willcox et al 2009; Chen et al 2015), collapse (Weiss et al 2001; Haug et al 2003; Douglas et al 2015), migration and replacement (Büntgen et al 2011, 2016; Kuper et al 2006; Timmermann et al 2016). A few attempts have been made under an idealized theoretical framework, for example the concept of social resilience for interpreting historical collapse as summarized from case studies (Butzer 2012), or a set of causal linkages relating climate change to large-scale human crises in preindustrial Europe (1500–1800) based on statistical analysis (Zhang et al 2011). Using the information from these historical literatures, a number of studies have examined the interaction mechanisms and processes of social impacts of historical climate change in China. This paper summarizes the main findings relating to the impacts of climate change in China during the past 2000 years
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