Climate change impacts on socioeconomic damages from weather-related events in China

Abstract

China is vulnerable to climate change impacts, and this study investigates the potential socioeconomic damages to China from weather-related events under future climate conditions. A two-part model incorporating a hierarchical Bayesian approach is employed to explore the effects of climate on human damage (the share of affected people in a total population) and economic damage (the share of economic losses in gross domestic product). Based on these relationships, the relative changes in socioeconomic damages under representative concentration pathways (RCPs) are presented at the regional and national levels. Our results show that China would experience an increase in socioeconomic damages from rainfall-related events under RCP2.6 and RCP4.5, and the higher increments mainly appear in the central and southwestern areas. Future climate conditions may greatly increase national damages from drought events under RCP8.5. Damages in some northern and southeastern provinces could double by 2081–2090. The national damage to humans from cold-related events is almost unchanged in most climate scenarios; however, the associated economic damage has downtrends.