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China’s socioeconomic risk from extreme events in a changing climate: a hierarchical Bayesian model

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Abstract

China has a large economic and demographic exposure to extreme events that is increasing rapidly due to its fast development, and climate change may further aggravate the situation. This paper investigates China’s socioeconomic risk from extreme events under climate change over the next few decades with a focus on sub-national heterogeneity. The empirical relationships between socioeconomic damages and their determinants are identified using a hierarchical Bayesian approach, and are used to estimate future damages as well as associated uncertainty bounds given specified climate and development scenarios. Considering projected changes in exposure, we find that the southwest and central regions and Hainan Island of China are likely to have a larger percentage of population at risk, while most of the southwest and central regions could generally have higher economic losses. Finally, the analysis suggests that increasing income can significantly decrease the number of people affected by extremes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Nos. 71521002 and 71020107026), National Key R&D Program (2016YFA0602603), and the China Scholarship Council. For their roles in producing, coordinating, and making available the ISI-MIP model output, we acknowledge the modeling groups (HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, GFDL-ESM2M, and NorESM1-M) and the ISI-MIP coordination team. We thank all colleagues from Center for Energy & Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, for providing helpful suggestions. We also appreciate the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their insightful and constructive comments that substantially improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), 5 South Zhongguancun Street, Beijing, 100081, China

    Xiao-Chen Yuan, Zhi-Fu Mi & Yi-Ming Wei

  2. School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Xiao-Chen Yuan, Zhi-Fu Mi & Yi-Ming Wei

  3. Columbia Water Center, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Xun Sun & Upmanu Lall

  4. Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Upmanu Lall

  5. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle & Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jun He

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  1. Xiao-Chen Yuan
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  2. Xun Sun
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  3. Upmanu Lall
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  4. Zhi-Fu Mi
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Correspondence to Yi-Ming Wei.

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Yuan, XC., Sun, X., Lall, U. et al. China’s socioeconomic risk from extreme events in a changing climate: a hierarchical Bayesian model. Climatic Change 139, 169–181 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1749-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1749-3

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