Historical Facts of Climatic Changes and Their Basic Impacts on Socioeconomic Development

Abstract

So as to explore the impact of climatic change on economic development or social progress, certain typical regions deserve us special attention, especially for China, who is one of the centers of ancient civilization, and has the largest population in the world and modern economy with sustained and rapid growth. In the past five thousand years since the origin of ancient Chinese civilization, the climate change was characterized by the fluctuation of warm-wet conditions and cold-dry conditions. The evolution of ancient Chinese civilization was closely related to the shift between warm-wet period and cold-dry period. In the 20th century, the temperature had increased significantly while the trend of precipitation increasing or decreasing had been not clear. More importantly, the general trends of global climatic change had a negative impact on China’s economic development. In the past 40 years, climate change had been mainly in three aspects, including overall increased in temperature, aggravated regional differences of precipitation, and occurred frequently of extreme weather or climate events. More severely, participation in international climate cooperation poses a severe challenge to China’s social progress. All in all, the timing characteristics of China’s climate change had had an irreversible impact on socioeconomic development promoting the first, and hindering the second.