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Climate change has had a huge impact on Southwest China, where extreme weather events have taken on an increasing trend. The region lies in the transition zone of three monsoons (East Asian, Indian, and Tibetan Plateau). We analyzed long-term trends of drought and flood disasters using sequential data on China's drought and flood incidence over 500 years (1501-2000), as well as precipitation records from 45 weather stations during 1961-2010. Results show that both types of disaster became more frequent. During 1501-2000, drought frequency rose from 2.12 to 4.15 per century to 9.03 and flood frequency from 2.06 to 5.09 per century to 11.94. For the 10 decades during 1900-2000, droughts exhibited a significant increasing trend ( R = 0.4491), while floods showed a slight increasing trend ( R = 0.0346). For extreme floods and droughts in 1961-2010, precipitation records revealed that most (2/3) areas in the region had increasing drought or flood frequencies. Generally, both frequency and intensity of these weather hazards conspicuously increased in Southwest China during 1501-2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A one-year simulation of tide- andwind-driven circulation in the Java Sea, which is one ofthe Indonesian seas located in a tropical area, hasbeen carried out using a three-dimensionalhydrodynamic model incorporating the influence of thewind waves generated at the sea surface. This area isinfluenced by the monsoon climate (east- andwest-monsoon). Six hourly-wind fields at 10 m abovethe sea surface were used as a representative windfield. In other respects, the effect of waves on thethree-dimensional hydrodynamic model has beenrepresented by the surface and bottom stresses. Athird-generation wave model called WAM (WAMDI, 1988)was used to calculate the wave parameters and thewave dependence of the drag coefficient. Thetrajectory of water particles induced by thecalculated velocity fields in the Java Sea was then simulated.In dealing with hazardous phenomena, this modelwill be extended to predict suspended sediment fluxes,particularly those relating to catastrophic changes in seabottom topography and beach erosion. It is also animportant tool for the prediction of storm surge events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]