Climate change may contribute to the spatio-temporal occurrence of disasters. Long-term studies of either homogeneous or heterogeneous responses of historical disasters to climate change are, however, limited by the quality and quantity of the available proxy data. Here we reconstruct spatio-temporal patterns of five types of disasters in China during the period AD 1368-1911. Our analyses of these time series reveal that warmer temperatures decreased the occurrence of disasters in the monsoon-affected parts of central-east China, but it increased the frequency and intensity of disasters along the boundary of arid and humid conditions in parts of southwest and northeast China, probably driven by the interplay among monsoon, westerlies, polar vortex and variation of temperature. Moreover, we show that drought and flood events had cascading effects on the occurrences of locust outbreaks, famine and human epidemics. Our findings suggest that climate can contribute to the spatio-temporal occurrence of disasters, and therefore may contribute to an improvement of China's regional to national risk management of future climate and environmental change.

Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis Department of Biosciences University of Oslo Blindern 0316 Oslo Norway

CzechGlobe Global Change Research Institute CAS and Masaryk University Kotlářská 2 61137 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Atmospheric Science School of Environmental Studies China University of Geosciences Hongshan District Wuhan People's Republic of China

Department of Geography University of Cambridge CB2 3EN Cambridge UK

National Climate Center China Meteorological Administration Haidian District Beijing People's Republic of China

State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro ecosystem Institute of Innovation Ecology and College of Life Sciences Lanzhou University Lanzhou 730000 People's Republic of China

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management on Pest Insects and Rodents in Agriculture Institute of Zoology Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100101 People's Republic of China

Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL Zürcherstrasse 111 8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland

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