Cross-regional comparison of drought impacts and social responses: case studies in Germany and Jing-Jin-Ji Region (China) since the 19th century

Abstract. Droughts, as one of the costliest weather-related disasters, have been and will continue to be part of the common human experience. However, insufficient endeavors have been made to investigate the similarities and differences in drought-society interactions under different climatic systems and sociocultural contexts. In light of this, this study took Germany and the Jing-Jin-Ji Region (China) as examples, where have abundant written documents and distinct socio-environmental contexts, and compared drought impacts and social responses in three pairs of extreme drought events since the 19th century. Based on area-specific reconstructions of dry-wet indices and multilingual written documents, drought events were first selected according to the relative extremity of precipitation deficits within each study area, then depicted in terms of five impact categories and five response attributes presented in a common impact-response structural framework, and finally compared with particular attention to the unchanging nature and dynamics of drought-society interactions during the transformation from agrarian to modern societies. The comparisons revealed that: (1) Abnormally dry and hot conditions, vegetation damage, unsatisfactory crop performance, insufficient river flow, food insecurity, and social instability were drought impacts independent of climate systems (i.e., marine climate and monsoon climate) and were well documented by different societies regardless of their severity. (2) Tackling socioeconomic issues within drought-stricken areas by balancing the supply and demand of scarce goods was a common responding preference of societies under different circumstances. In this case, actions were often reactive and needed the participation of governments. (3) The diversification of documented drought manifestations in the socioeconomic category was observed in both study areas as society developed, owing to increasingly complicated economic sectors and the wider range of social concerns. (4) Early and multiple reactive interventions reduced the threat of food insecurity to individual survival in recent droughts, as they successfully stopped the development from harvest failures to food crises. However, in any of the study areas, they have not been sufficient to eliminate survival-threatening manifestations of compound drought-heatwave events with regard to water security (i.e., drinking water scarcity) and health (i.e., morality in vulnerable populations). The results not only provided empirical evidence of climate-environment-society nexus that go beyond period-specific experiences but also demonstrated the feasibility of conducting documentary-based cross-regional comparative studies in spite of linguistic differences.