Social impacts of climate change in historical China

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 socialeconomic 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.