Yunnan During The Qing Dynasty (1711-1911), The Monsoon Climate And Weather Disasters

Yunnan Province is located on the low-latitude plateau on the Northern Hemisphere. Due to this special geographical location, it is affected by various monsoon circulation thus resulting in distinctive features in its climate evolution. Therefore, studying the historical climate as well as discussing the features and mechanisms regarding the change of climate in this area is of great significance to the research into both Asian monsoon and the Global Environmental Change.Firstly, by applying such established materials as archives, local annals, and collected works, the present dissertation centres on recuperating and reconstructed the starting moment of rainy seasons, the powerful and weak periods of rainy seasons in Kunming as well as the series of the winter average temperature, which are all of high-resolution ratio, during the Qing Dynasty between 1711 and 1911.Secondly, by systematically collecting and arranging the historical documents remained in archives, local annals and collected works, the author has established the most complete ACCESS databank.Thirdly, by exploring how the weather-report system formed in the Qing Dynasty as well as making a concrete study and analysis of the archives about precipitation, disaster and harvest of the Qing dynasty, the dissertation points out systemic deviation and its cause and meanwhile provides the checking approaches to the systemic deviation of historical documents about weather report.Fourthly, the dissertation also explores the scientific ways of recuperating the series of the starting moment of rainy seasons by means of historical documents, and it also succeeds in recuperating these series in Yunnan Province between the years 1711 and 1911. The analysis indicates that there is obvious change in the starting moment of rainy seasons in Yunnan during these long years, and there exists a cycleof 3 years and 11 years. This reflects to a certain degree the gradual change of the summer monsoon in Yunnan. At the same time, the dissertation finds that the El Nino event plays a very important role in the starting periods of rainy seasons in Yunnan, and that there is an obvious turn period in such influence, which in turn may show there is certain influence from the ENSO event.Fifthly, using historical documents, this dissertation discusses how to recuperate the grades of precipitation, whose precision lies between the recuperation of precipitation and grades of draught and flood; it attempts to adopt the abnormal distribution more in accord with the factual conditions of precipitation; it succeeds in adopting a series of measures intended to solve the problem of systemic deviation. The analysis indicates that the 201 years from 1711 to 1911 can be divided into four phases according to the precipitation in rainy season in Kunming, each having its own characteristics, and that the cycle of the sun's activities may affect the precipitation in Kunming.Sixthly, by establishing the regress equation of bi-determiner of the snow in winter and the precipitation in dry seasons, the dissertation recuperates the series of the average temperature in winters between 1711 and 1911 in Kunming, and this is the first rebuilt series of high-resolution ratio about the historical temperature in low latitude areas. The dissertation, by making use of other documents, also creates the series of the 10 years average temperature between 1856 and 1900. The analysis shows that Kunming experienced rather too cold period with some intervals during the 18 th and 19 * centuries, and that the temperature in Kunming became higher. While compared with other areas in the country, it can found be many diversities in Kunming's high and low temperatures.Seventhly, the dissertation investigates the cause of the climate that resulted in the serious starvation in most areas of Yunnan during 1815 and 1817 and arrives at a conclusion that the starvation resulted from the diminished output due to the low temperature in continuous summers and autumns which is a result of the Tanboravolcano in Indonesia. There must have been the effect of the low temperature in other areas in the country, but only the areas on the low-latitude plateau and the crisscross areas of farming and pasturage experienced the serious effect.Eighthly, the dissertation makes a concrete analysis of the cause of the climate that resulted in the continuous serious draught and flood in Yunnan during 1905 and 1907, then points out that the draught followed by flood in 1905 and 1907 had some relation to the El Nino event, while the serious draught in 1906 may be related to the abnormal phenomenon of the monsoon circulation in East Asia, and that continuous serious disasters may be related to the unstableness of the climate at its turning period. The social factor of the serious disasters is that the widely planting of opium and the more important one —the failure in society reconstructed resulted from the waned storehouse and the disrepair of the irrigation after the war (1856-1875) during the Xianfeng-tongzhi Period, brought about the serious fall in grain production and storage, which in turn enlarges the destruction of the disasters. Fortunately, the society made an active response to the disaster.Lastly, based on the comparison and the analysis of the above recuperated seriess, the dissertation concludes that the evolution of historical climate in Yunnan has special and distinctive characteristics and that the cause of the evolution of the precipitation in rainy seasons is more complicated than that of the starting moment of rainy seasons. Although Yunnan enjoyed varieties in the allocation of dry and wet seasons as well as cold and hot seasons, it experienced mainly the alternate change between cold-wet seasons and dry-hot seasons when those are considered within a hundred years. The climatic change in Yunnan usually happened and completed in a abrupt way, and furthermore, there were some periods when the climate was abnormally unsteady. Yunnan also has the weak sides regarding the changes in the precipitation at the starting moment of rainy season, in the precipitation throughout the whole rainy season, and in the temperature in the summer between those years. Serious disasters in history usually have relation to these changes. The climatic...