Zhaoli Wang

South China University of Technology | SCUT

Rainfall and wind speed are two important meteorological variables that have a significant impact on agriculture, human health, and socio-economic development. While individual rainfall or wind events have been widely studied, little attention has been devoted to study the lead–lag relationship between rainfall and wind speed, particularly in coast...

Study region: The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), China. Study focus: Using hourly rain gauge data and CMORPH data, we use the duration-dependent generalized extreme value (D-GEV) model and the scaling invariant GEV model inferred by the Bayesian hierarchical model to derive the intensity-duration-frequency IDF characteristics of...

The adverse impacts of climate and landuse change are threatening the availability of water quantity and its quality, yet there are limited understandings in the response of water availability to changing environment at different spatio-temporal scales. Aimed at quantifying the individual and superimposed effects of climate and landuse change on st...

Increasing extreme precipitation caused by climate change and human activities may have severe consequences on people's lives and property. In this study, the effect difference of urbanization, climate change and their compound effect on the annual and seasonal extreme precipitation under various Shared Socioeconomic Pathways are investigated using...

The modeling and forecasting of short-duration and high-intensity floods are of importance for flood defenses and adaptations. One of the conventional ways to model or forecast such events is to utilize hydrological models driven by meteorological and hydrological station data. However, this suffers from complicated parameter specification and larg...

Climate change and urbanization will further exacerbate tropical cyclones (TCs) causing severer flooding especially in coastal urbanized areas. In this study, the compound effects of climate change and urbanization on organized TC and its flood risk across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) were explored and future projections of...

Climate change and increasing urbanization have worsened urban floods and other water problems, and it is generally accepted that the optimization of the spatial layout of low impact development (LID) practices is a promising solution. Existing studies have focused on coupling the hydrological model with optimization methods, but little is known ab...

Urban floods are becoming increasingly more frequent, which has led to tremendous economic losses. The application of inundation modeling to predict and simulate urban flooding is an effective approach for disaster prevention and risk reduction, while also addressing the uncertainty problem in the model is always a challenging task. In this study,...

Compound climate events can strongly impact vegetation productivity, yet the direct and lagged vegetation productivity responses to seasonal compound warm-dry and cold-dry events remain unclear. Here we use observationally-constrained and process-based model data and analyze vegetation productivity responses to compound events of precipitation and...

Long‐range precipitation forecasting is crucial for flooding control and water resources management. However, making precise forecasting is rather difficult due to the complex climatic factors and large uncertainties arising from long lead times. Sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) is one of the strongest signals that influence regional precipit...

Long-range precipitation forecasting is crucial for integrated water resources planning and elaborate management. However, due to the chaos and randomness nature of precipitation, it is rather difficult to make accurate forecast. This study introduces the Time-Varying Multipole Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Index and the Forecast Opinion Index, and...

The excessive application of agricultural irrigation water and chemical fertilizer has increased crop yields to help meet the demand for food, but it has also led to major water environment problem, i.e. non-point source (NPS) pollution, which needs to be addressed to achieve sustainable development targets. Although numerous studies have focused o...

Rainfall pattern (RP) and precipitation concentration (PC) are two critical indices for measuring rainfall. Detecting their changes under global warming helps to understand better the rainfall variability and the flooding formation. Using the Guangdong Province, China, as a study case, five criteria were used to determine the independent precipitat...

Due to the increasingly frequent occurrence of urban waterlogging, the spatial optimization of low impact development (LID) practices has been commonly used to detain and reduce storm water runoff in the most cost-effective way. In this study, the flow transmission chain (FTC) was proposed to replace the routing portion of the Storm Water Managemen...

The projection of reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo) based on global climate models (GCMs) is an important task in many fields under climate change background. However, ETo projections are typically hindered by the limited data availability or high uncertainty of the GCM-projected climate variable for ETo calculation (e.g., radiation and wind...

Drought is one of the major environmental stressor, influencing the distribution, growth, and development of plants seriously. However, the exploration on the response of vegetation dynamics to drought is complicated and till today remains a challenge for China, a country with multiple eco-geographical regions. Targeted measures can be taken if com...

Waterlogging events in urban areas are becoming increasingly more frequent, which has led to tremendous economic losses. Urban road networks have also suffered heavy interference and destruction due to this type of disaster, and the precise assessment of road network vulnerability is an effective measure by which to reduce losses. Therefore, in thi...

While reliable drought prediction is fundamental for drought mitigation and water resources management, it is still a challenge to develop robust drought prediction models due to complex local hydro-climatic conditions and various predictors. Sea surface temperature (SST) is considered as the fundamental predictor to develop drought prediction mode...

In water resources management and practices, the time-connected duration and frequency of episodic low streamflow events (and droughts) are often needed for a range of purposes such as water supply planning, low flow management, and drought planning. However, the existing graphical tools commonly used in hydrology such as flow duration curves (FDC)...

Landscape patterns have a substantial effect on non-point source (NPS) pollution in watersheds. Facilitating sustainable development of mountain-rural areas is a major priority for China. Knowledge of the impacts of various landscapes on water quality in these areas is critical to meeting environmental goals. This study applied the Soil and Water A...

Compound dry and hot conditions frequently cause large impacts on ecosystems and societies worldwide. A suite of indices is available for the assessment of droughts and heatwaves, yet there is no index available for incorporating the joint variability of dry and hot conditions at the sub-monthly scale. Here we introduce a daily-scale index, called...

Soil erosion has become one of the most serious environmental problems worldwide, and rainfall is considered a crucial factor in water erosion. Rainfall erosivity is defined as the ability of precipitation to trigger soil erosion. The accurate assessment of rainfall erosivity is essential before taking appropriate measures to stop or slow down wate...

Urban inundation management should take various forms to deal with different flood situations, rapid population growth, and climate change. Research on the advantages and disadvantages of grey infrastructure, such as deep tunnels and pipe networks, is necessary to apply hybrid green-grey infrastructure scientifically and efficiently. A novel urban...

Availability of precipitation data at high spatial and temporal resolution is crucial for the understanding of precipitation behaviors that are determinant for environmental aspects such as hydrology, ecology, and social aspects like agriculture, food security, or health issues. This study evaluates the performance of 3B42-V7 satellite-based precip...

Rapid urbanisation and economic growth in developing Asian countries have exacerbated their exposure to flood hazards, particularly evident in low-lying urban cities that are currently facing increasing risks from extreme precipitations, likely made worse by the impending climate change. We present a set of simplified indices representative of the...

In recent decades, the severe drought across agricultural regions of China has had significant impact on agriculture. The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) has been widely used for drought analyses; however, SPEI is prone to be affected by potential evapotranspiration (PET). We thus examined the correlations between soil mo...

Compound dry and hot conditions regularly lead to large impacts on natural ecosystems and human society across the world. While a suite of indices exists for the assessments of droughts and heatwaves, respectively, so far no index has been developed to incorporate the joint variability of dry and hot conditions at sub-monthly scale. Here, we introd...

Anthropogenic activities have a tremendous impact on water ecosystems worldwide, especially in China. To quantitatively evaluate the hydrological alteration connected with aquatic lives and river ecological risks, we took the Beijiang River located in South China as the case study and used ecosurplus (defined as ecological carrying capacity exceedi...

Flooding is a major natural disaster that has brought tremendous losses to mankind throughout the ages. Even so, floods can be controlled by appropriate measures to minimize loss and damage. Flood risk assessment is an essential analytic step in preventing floods and reducing losses. Identifying previous flood risk and predicting future features ar...

Extreme precipitation can cause disasters such as floods, landslides and crop destruction. A further study on extreme precipitation is essential for enabling reliable projections of future changes. In this study, the trends and frequency distribution changes in extreme precipitation across different major river basins around the world during 1960-2...

Floods are generally considered to be the most common natural disaster worldwide. Climate change and human activity are two key driving factors of flood formation, and it is difficult to determine how to quantitatively detect their relative impacts on flood susceptibility. As an important non-engineering measure of preventing floods and reducing lo...

Recent events across many regions around the world have shown that short-term droughts (i.e. daily or weekly) with sudden occurrence can lead to huge losses to a wide array of environmental and societal sectors. However, the most commonly-used drought indices can only identify drought at monthly scale. Here, we introduced a daily-scale drought inde...

Sunshine duration (SD) is a key index with which to quantitatively measure the intensity and duration of solar radiation. The exploration of spatiotemporal characteristics and potential influential factors for SD could help us better understand solar radiation variability. In this study, we first explore the spatiotemporal variability of SD across...

Sunshine duration (SD) has recently received a great deal of attention as it relates to climatic research under global climate change. Here, we explored the spatiotemporal variability of SD in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in mainland China during 1960-2018. A novel equation was proposed to assess the relative influence of 5 climatic variables on var...

Understanding the trend characteristics of design rainstorm and spatial heterogeneity of extreme precipitation is of great importance to reduce disasters induced by rare extreme precipitation. Using a high-resolution (0.5° × 0.5°) daily gridded data set of precipitation across mainland China from 1961 to 2013, this study investigated the historical...

The analysis of the impact of drought events on terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) is significant to understand the effects of droughts on regional/global carbon cycling. During the past three decades, terrestrial ecosystems in mainland China have been frequently impacted by drought events. However, quantitative analyses of the variation of...

With the release of Global Precipitation Measurement Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM products, hydrologists can obtain precipitation data with higher resolution and wider coverage. However, great uncertainties still exist in the accuracy and hydrological utility of these data in alpine and gorge regions with sparse gauge stations. In...

Extending series of river streamflow based on tree-ring reconstruction is of scientific and practical importance for understanding hydrological or meteorological change of past. To achieve more accurate reconstructions, the intelligent learning algorithm random forest (RF) was proposed in this study to reconstruct the annual streamflow of the sourc...

With a high spatial resolution and wide coverage, satellite-based precipitation products have compensated for the shortcomings of traditional measuring methods based on rain gauge stations, such as the sparse and uneven distribution of rain gauge stations. However, the accuracy of satellite precipitation products is not high enough in some areas, a...

Evapotranspiration is a vital component of the land surface process, thus, a more accurate estimate of evapotranspiration is of great significance to agricultural production, research on climate change, and other activities. In order to explore the spatiotemporal variation of evapotranspiration under global climate change in the Pearl River Basin (...

Hydrological models have been widely applied in flood forecasting, water resource management and other environmental sciences. Most hydrological models calibrate and validate parameters with available records. However, the first step of hydrological simulation is always to quantitatively and objectively split samples for use in calibration and vali...

This study mainly evaluated and compared satellite-based quantitative precipitation estimate products (QPEs) for the drought monitoring of mainland China. Two long-term (more than 30 a) satellite-based QPEs, i.e. the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR) and the...

Crop reference evapotranspiration (ET0), which connects the energy and water balance, is an important indicator used in water resource management and agricultural production. On the basis of daily meteorological data from 479 observation stations, we investigate changes in ET0 and associated climate factors across the main grain‐producing area (MGP...

Spatial interpolation of precipitation data is an essential input for hydrological modelling. At present, the most frequently used spatial interpolation methods for precipitation are based on the assumption of stationary in spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity. As climate change is altering the precipitation, stationary in spatial auto...

Terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) plays an essential role in the global carbon cycle as well as for climate change. However, in the past three decades, terrestrial ecosystems across mainland China suffered from frequent drought and, to date, the adverse impacts on NPP remain uncertain. This study explored the spatiotemporal features of NPP...

Long-term (over 30a) satellite-based quantitative rainfall estimate (SRE) products provide an ideal data source for hydrological drought monitoring. This study mainly explores the suitability of the two long-term SREs, the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR) a...

To evaluate the accuracy and applicability of the TMPA 3B42-V7 precipitation product for the Lancang River basin, we used different statistical indices to explore the performance of the product in comparison to gauge data. Then, we performed a hydrologic simulation using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model with two scenarios...

Drought is regarded as an environmental disaster that has significantly impacted on economic and social development in recent decades, particularly in Southwest China (SWC). Here, we presented an analysis of spatiotemporal variations of meteorological drought in SWC. We computed the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index using the Penm...

A rapid increase in the risk of urban flooding in recent years has urged the research community to enrich approaches to deal with urban flooding problems. The state-of-the-art approach consists of coupling one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) hydrodynamic models. However, at present such coupled 1D/2D models are mostly commercial and compl...

Degradation of freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide is a primary cause of increasing water insecurity, raising the need for integrated solutions to freshwater management. While methods for characterizing the multi-faceted challenges of managing freshwater ecosystems abound, they tend to emphasize either social or ecological dimension...

Land use and land cover patterns in mainland China have substantially changed in the recent decades under the economic reform policies of the government. The terrestrial carbon cycle, particularly the net primary productivity (NPP), has been substantially changed on both local and national scales. With the growing concern over the effects of the te...

Climate change and human activity are typically regarded as the two most important factors affecting runoff. Quantitative evaluation of the impact of climate change and human activity on runoff is important for the protection, planning, and management of water resources. This study assesses the contributions of climate change and human activity to...

Drought is considered an environmental disaster with a direct and devastating impact on agriculture. However, little research focuses on climate change related drought variations across the global grain production area (GGPA). Thus, the variation of crop yield across different grain production regions that experience severe drought remains inadequa...

Water demand prediction (WDP) is the basis for water allocation. However, traditional methods in WDP, such as statistical modeling, system dynamics modeling, and the water quota method have a critical disadvantage in that they do not consider any constraints, such as available water resources and ecological water demand. This study proposes a two-s...

Drought is expected to increase in frequency, severity, and duration in the future due to global warming and this will greatly threaten the future socioeconomic development. This study evaluates the spatiotemporal variation of future drought (2016-2100) in the Pearl River Basin (PRB) using the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), the Variable Infi...

Human activities and climate change have altered the spatial and temporal distribution of water availability which is a principal prerequisite for allocation of different water resources. In order to quantify the impacts of climate change and human activities on water availability and optimal allocation of water resources, hydrological models and o...

Satellite-remote-sensing-based precipitation analysis products with high spatiotemporal resolution provided a new data source for the studies of drought. The aim of this study is to evaluate the drought assessment utility of the TMPA (tropical rainfall measurement mission (TRMM) multi-satellite precipitation analysis) 3B42V7 post-real-time satellit...

Latest-generation GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) IMERG (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM) satellite-based precipitation quantitative estimation products provide a new source of precipitation data. This study evaluates the accuracy and performance of the near-real-time"early run" and "late run" IMERG products (here after IMERG-E...

With high spatiotemporal resolution and wide coverage, satellite-based precipitation products can potentially fill the deficiencies of traditional in situ gauge precipitation observations and provide an alternative data source for ungauged areas. However, due to the relatively poor accuracy and high uncertainty of satellite-based precipitation prod...

By characterizing the patterns of temperature extremes over nine integrated agricultural regions (IARs) in China from 1961 to 2011, this study performed trend analyses on 16 extreme temperature indices using a high-resolution (0.5° × 0.5°) daily gridded dataset and the Mann-Kendall method. The results show that annually, at both daytime and nightti...

Rainfall-induced landslide susceptibility assessment is currently considered an effective tool for landslide hazard assessment as well as for appropriate warning and forecasting. As part of the assessment procedure, a credible index weight matrix can strongly increase the rationality of the assessment result. This study proposed a novel weight-dete...

Climate and land use/cover (LUC) are the two most significant factors that directly affect the runoff process. However, most research on runoff response has focused mainly on projected climate variation, while future LUC variability has been neglected. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the impacts of projected climate and LUC cha...