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Arid Land Geography ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (5): 1281-1289.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000–6060.2021.05.09

• Climatology and Hydrology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Spatial-temporal distribution of wind disasters in Xinjiang

ZHANG Taixi(),WANG Hui(),YU Xingjie   

  1. Xinjiang Climate Center, Urumqi 830002, Xinjiang, China
  • Received:2020-11-18 Revised:2021-01-26 Online:2021-09-25 Published:2021-09-22
  • Contact: Hui WANG E-mail:1546219074@qq.com;304626579@qq.com

Abstract:

Wind disaster is one of the most serious meteorological disaster occurrences in Xinjiang, China. Its temporal and spatial distributions are of great significance to wind disaster prevention. Based on the data of six types of disasters that occurred in Xinjiang during the period of 1980-2019, we calculated herein the yearly and monthly accumulated values of the corresponding six disaster factors, namely the number of deaths, collapsed houses, collapsed sheds, number of livestock deaths, affected area of crops, and number of wind disasters from 86 in the county-level city (prefecture-level city). We then constructed a wind disaster damage index (Z) that obeys the Γ distribution and has passed the significance test by using the ratio weighting and linear dimensionless methods to classify the abovementioned six factors into four categories of mild, moderate, severe, and extra severe. The assessment results suggest that the wind disaster losses in Xinjiang have shown a wavelike increase in the recent 40 years. These losses reached the extra severe level for the six factors over these 40 years. For disasters that occurred after 1998, five of these six factors became more serious beyond 2005, which may be related to the increase of the crop areas. The result of the wind disaster proportion in each month shows that these wind disasters mainly occur in April and May, accounting for 67%-90% of that of the whole year. This demonstrates that spring is a critical season, during which wind disasters happen with the highest frequency and the biggest loss over Xinjiang. Compared with those during spring, the disaster losses during the other seasons are smaller, especially for autumn and winter. Thus, focusing on disaster prevention and relief during spring is important. As regards the spatial distribution of wind disasters, the disaster areas in southern Xinjiang are always larger than those in northern Xinjiang. The crop losses are frequently located in the sides of Tianshan Mountain. The high rate of the number of deaths was also observed in southern Xinjiang. The distribution of the composite damage index of wind disasters further suggests that the severe and extra severe grades of wind disasters were concentrated in Turpan, Aksu, and Kashi Prefectures. Only severe-grade events happen in Shihezi and Fuhai county-level cities (prefecture-level cities) in northern Xinjiang. The losses are the most serious in Aksu because of its larger crop areas and intensive flow downward Tianshan Mountain. Aksu, Bayingolin, Kashi, and Hotan Prefectures in southern Xinjiang and Turpan and Hami City in eastern Xinjiang generally always suffer from severe wind damages, requiring the government to provide prevention measures.

Key words: wind disaster, damage index, grade division, spatial-temporal distribution, Xinjiang