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Agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China is the prominent area for agricultural production, but it is also the most typical ecological fragile area with frequent drought disasters. Taking Yulin City at Shaanxi Province in China as the case area, the paper aims to investigate the spatio-temporal changes of agricultural vulnerability to drought in China's agro-pastoral ecotone in the period 2000 to 2020. The results show that: 1) the agricultural vulnerability to drought in Yulin City has shifted from high vulnerability in the period 2000–2010 to low vulnerability in the period 2011–2020. 2) There exist obvious spatio-temporal differences of the agricultural vulnerability to drought in Yulin City during the research period. 3) Four sensitive events and 14 resilient events were identified in the research and the crops of Yulin had become more resilient to drought. Finally, the paper put forward with policy implications to make adaptive strategies of agriculture to climate change in China's agro-pastoral ecotone in the future, e.g., carrying out agricultural zoning based on agricultural production conditions, intensifying the construction of disaster prevention and relief system, and integrating with modern agricultural technology to develop new type agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The summer monsoon–affected area is a suitable area for agricultural production in China. Against the background of climate warming, the activity of the summer monsoon is changing significantly. The drought and flood disasters in this region are becoming more and more frequent and have a greater and more serious impact on agricultural production. Therefore, based on observational data from meteorological stations and yield loss data in agriculture caused by drought and flood disasters in summer monsoon–affected areas, this paper studied the characteristics of the hazard of disaster-causing factors, the risk of losses to agriculture caused by droughts and floods, and their correlation. Moreover, it compared and analyzed the variability of drought and flood hazard and risk to agriculture before and after a temperature rise. The results showed that the precipitation in summer monsoon–affected areas is obviously affected by monsoon activities, and there is an overall though non-significant positive correlation between annual average standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and the summer monsoon activity index (MI). The drought disaster comprehensive loss rate (DCLR) was generally higher than the flood disaster comprehensive loss rate (FCLR). This shows that the impact of drought on agriculture production is significantly greater than that of floods in this area. The high hazard and risk areas for drought were mainly distributed along the edge of the summer monsoon area and in its vicinity, whereas the high hazard and risk areas for flooding were mainly distributed in the lower reach of the Yangtze, Songhua, and Liaohe Rivers. Among them, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang are high-risk superposition areas of drought and flood disasters. The hazards of drought and flood dominate the risk of disaster loss. Climate warming has significantly expanded the high-hazard and high-risk ranges in China for drought and flood disasters and has also changed their spatial distribution patterns. The high-hazard area for drought has shifted to the monsoon edge area, the high-risk area for drought has moved northward, and both the high-hazard and the high-risk areas for floods have clearly moved southward. The impact of climate warming on drought was more significant than on floods. This study provides important scientific guidance for formulating drought and flood disaster prevention planning and agricultural production development patterns in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two fundamental questions on climate change and variability: to what extent has climate changed and/or varied over years in two districts of different agro-ecological regions or zones and how do any changes differ between the zones or districts? Given the rural-rural migration pattern observed between the districts, understanding climate change risk to rural livelihoods cannot be overemphasised. To assess change and variability, we utilise rainfall data-records over a 36-year period from 1980 to 2016. Results show that there are wide variations and differences within and between the districts. Evidence suggests a general reduction in both annual rainfall and wet days. There is also ground to suggest that the rainy season duration is becoming shorter, given that rainfall onset is increasingly starting late, while cessation is increasingly coming early. Dry spells frequency and duration trends within rainy season show an increase over the period examined. We conclude that local climate in both areas has changed over the period investigated. However, while Livingstone seems to have experienced more droughts and unreliable rainfall, Kabwe experienced a bigger change in both rainfall and rainy season duration. We further conclude that migrants into Kabwe and other inhabitants are not any safer from climate change risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant climatic mode responsible for seasonal rainfall variability across central southern Africa has been well-established as ENSO. Hence, the El Niño signal of the equatorial Pacific has been used extensively to predict droughts in this sub-region. Although this paper acknowledges that El Niño influences rainfall deficits over eastern southern Africa, an earlier signal of extreme positive sea level pressure (SLP) anomalies at Darwin for the averaged March to June period (MAMJ Darwin) has proved to have a superior remote connection to droughts in the sub-region. Simple linear statistical tools including composite techniques and correlation methods have been employed on century long data sets (1901–2000) to identify the emerging paramount connection between MAMJ Darwin SLP anomalies and southern African rainfall. Both MAMJ Darwin SLP anomalies and the Zimbabwe seasonal rainfall time series are significantly correlated (above the 95% significant level) with sea surface temperature anomalies. These represent the Indian Ocean Dipole mode in the tropical Indian Ocean and ENSO in the tropical Pacific for the averaged September to December period. ‘Pure’ MAMJ Darwin (that occur in the absence of El Niño in the Pacific) coincide with droughts more significantly (83% hit rate) than ‘pure’ El Niño events (not preceded by a high MAMJ Darwin) (38% hit rate). Co-occurrences (MAMJ Darwin preceded by El Niño) do not only have the highest hit rate of 93% but subsequent droughts are noticeably more severe. The ‘pure’ El Niños however, are not only poorly related to Zimbabwe seasonal rainfall deficits, but are apparently not connected to extreme droughts of the 20th century. Thus, MAMJ Darwin is a good simple predictor of droughts associated with or without ENSO in the Pacific. The high prediction skill of these results, especially the inherent longer lead-time than ENSO, makes MAMJ Darwin SLP anomalies an ideal additional input candidate for sub-regional drought monitoring and forecasting schemes. In this way, drought early warning and disaster preparedness activities can be enhanced over the sub-region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]