Impact of climate change on fluctuations of grain harvests in China from the Western Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties (206 BC–960 AD)

Su, Yun; Fang, Xiuqi; Yin, Jun

doi:10.1007/s11430-013-4795-y

Cited by 54 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…During the last decades, much research has occurred worldwide on the impacts of historical climate change, such as on agricultural production, human population and migration, disease and human health, human settlements, human activities, social unrest, and rise and fall of ancient civilizations (Kenneth, 1998;Weiss and Bradley, 2001;Haug et al, 2003;Zhang et al, 2005Zhang et al, , 2006Zhang et al, , 2007Lee et al, 2008;Fan, 2010;Lee and Zhang, 2010;Zhang et al, 2011;Du and Shi, 2012;Amorosi et al, 2013;Chang et al, 2014;Su et al, 2014;Welc and Marks, 2014;Chull et al, 2014). Some of the typical results include the collapses of the Akkadian civilization in western Asia and the Mayan civilization, induced by persistent drought (deMenocal, 2001;Haug et al, 2003), and the strong coincidence between climate change and major events in the history of Europe over the past 2500 years (Büntgen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to reconstruct the long-term harvest series with high resolution to inform research on climate change impacts, Su et al (2014) developed a method to reconstruct a 10-year resolution grain yield grade sequence of China from 210 BC to 960 AD based on direct and indirect descriptions related to harvests extracted from historical documents in China. The reconstructed graded harvest sequence shows the great advantage and potential capacity of China's long-term, continuous, and rich historical documents for reconstructions of the long-term, high-resolution proxy social economic index series in China.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relationships between temperature change and grain harvest fluctuations in China from 210 BC to 1910 AD

Yin

Fang

2015

Quaternary International

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between temperature change and grain harvest fluctuations in China from 210 BC to 1910 AD

Yin

Fang

2015

Quaternary International

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“…However, better economic performance was found in wetter climates. Su et al (2014) demonstrated that a combination of cold and dry conditions could cause extremely detrimental effects on agricultural harvests. This result may be applied to the climate-economic relationship.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using long-term historical records to reconstruct a socioeconomic proxy and to quantitatively study the relationship between climate change and historical rhythms has been an advantage in China for climate sociology research (Fang et al 2013;Ye et al 2012;Su et al 2014;Zhang et al 2006;Lee et al 2008). Previous studies paid more attention to the climatic effects on historical cyclical rhythms based on population (Lee et al 2008), the frequency of revolts and wars (Zhang et al 2010c;Zhang et al 2006) and dynastic collapse events .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A preliminary analysis of economic fluctuations and climate changes in China from BC 220 to AD 1910

Wei

Fang

2014

Reg Environ Change

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Understanding the socioeconomic effects of past climate change is valuable for sustainable social development. However, quantitative analyses of the longterm relationships between climate change and human society have been limited by a lack of long-term highresolution data that indicate socioeconomic processes. Here, based on 1,091 records extracted from 25 books on Chinese history and economic history written by leading contemporary scholars, an economic proxy series for China with decadal resolution is presented that encompasses the period from BC 220 to AD 1910. A method for semantic differential and integrating descriptions with multi-time resolution is developed. The statistical results show that warm and wet periods were associated with above-average economic performance, while cold and dry climatic scenarios greatly increased the possibility of economic crisis. Temperature was more influential than precipitation in explaining the long-term economic fluctuations, whereas precipitation displayed more significant effects on the short-term macro-economic cycle. It is proposed that the climatic effects on agrarian economic development were highly dependent on the social vulnerability, which is determined by particular social, economic and political backgrounds. From a deep time perspective, our study may provide new insight into the current intense arguments regarding the economic effects of global warming.

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“…This can identify the mechanisms driving the impact of climate change on social vicissitudes in the present study, because as a country founded on the basis of agriculture, both the people's living standards and the comprehensive national strength in China relied on agriculture. Long-term climate change has significant direct effects on regional agricultural production (Galloway, 1986;Su et al, 2014;Yin et al, 2015), which in turn affects regional land carrying capacity. At an empire-wide scale, government-led regulation of food constituted the main aspect of economic life in ancient China (Wei et al, 2015).…”

Section: Mechanisms For Climatic Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and social vicissitudes in China over the past two millennia

Yin

Fang

2016

Quat. res.

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a b s t r a c tThe relation between climate change and historical rhythms has long been discussed. However, this type of study still faces the lack of high-resolution data concerning long-term socio-economic processes. In this study, we collected 1586 items of direct and proffered evidence from 29 Chinese history books. We used semantic analysis to reconstruct a quantitative series of the social vicissitudes of the past 2000 yr with a 10-yr resolution to express the phase transition of the social vicissitudes of the dynasties in China. Our reconstruction demonstrates that social vicissitudes have clear cyclical features on multiple time scales. Analysis of the association of social rise and fall with climate change indicates that temperature displayed more significant effects on social vicissitudes in the long term, while precipitation displayed more significant effects on the social vicissitudes in the short term. There are great overlaps between social and climatic variables around the predominant or periodic bands. Social rise mostly occurred in the centennial-scale warm periods, whereas social decline mostly occurred in the centennial-scale cold periods. Under warm-wet conditions, social rise occurred over 57% of the time; under cold-dry conditions, the social decline occurred over 66% of the time.

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Impact of climate change on fluctuations of grain harvests in China from the Western Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties (206 BC–960 AD)

Cited by 54 publications

References 10 publications

Relationships between temperature change and grain harvest fluctuations in China from 210 BC to 1910 AD

Relationships between temperature change and grain harvest fluctuations in China from 210 BC to 1910 AD

A preliminary analysis of economic fluctuations and climate changes in China from BC 220 to AD 1910

Climate change and social vicissitudes in China over the past two millennia

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