Fig. 6: Climatic and anthropogenic attribution of three major floods in the Yangtze River Basin.
From: Anthropogenic transition in flood regimes: insights from a millennium of the Yangtze River records
Phase spaces for precipitation and discharge accumulated during the three worst flood events (1954, 1998, 2020) at three representative stations: Yichang (a), Hankou (b), and Datong (c). Accumulation minimizes the variability in flood impact due to antecedent soil moisture conditions. Unlike the 1954 and 1998 events, the 2020 flood occurred with relatively low levels of accumulated precipitation and discharge, underscoring the significant intensification of downstream flooding due to artificial drainage from 2629 pumping stations in the mid-reaches. Despite the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest in terms of power, reducing the flood peak at Yichang (upstream) from 75,000 m3/s to 51,000 m3/s in 2020 (a), peaks still occurred at Hankou (midstream) and Datong (downstream), with discharges second only to the 1954 event. The size of the bubbles represents the daily river discharge (m3/s), and the solid bubbles indicate the maximum discharge (m3/s) for each flood event.
