RESEARCH ARTICLE
10.1029/2022EF002726
Key Points:
• S outhern (Northern) China witness
delayed (earlier) annual flood peaks in
the past six decades
• Reversed latitudinal changes in flood
peak timing lead to the growing
spatial extents of synchronous
flooding over China
• Weak temporal correlation between
flood and rainfall synchrony scale
highlights the role of soil moisture in
modulating flood peak timing
Supporting Information:
Supporting Information may be found in
the online version of this article.
Correspondence to:
L. Yang,
yanglong@nju.edu.cn
Citation:
Yang, Y., Yang, L., Chen, X., Wang,
Q., & Tian, F. (2022). Climate leads
to reversed latitudinal changes in
Chinese flood peak timing. Earth's
Future, 10, e2022EF002726. https://doi.
org/10.1029/2022EF002726
Received 17 FEB 2022
Accepted 19 MAY 2022
Author Contributions:
Conceptualization: Yixin Yang, Long
Yang, Xiaodong Chen, Qiang Wang,
Fuqiang Tian
Data curation: Yixin Yang, Long Yang
Formal analysis: Yixin Yang, Long Yang
Funding acquisition: Long Yang,
Fuqiang Tian
Investigation: Yixin Yang, Long Yang,
Xiaodong Chen, Qiang Wang, Fuqiang
Tian
Methodology: Yixin Yang, Long Yang,
Xiaodong Chen, Qiang Wang, Fuqiang
Tian
Project Administration: Long Yang,
Fuqiang Tian
© 2022 The Authors. Earth's Future
published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on
behalf of American Geophysical Union.
This is an open access article under
the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
YANG ET AL.
Climate Leads to Reversed Latitudinal Changes in Chinese
Flood Peak Timing
Yixin Yang1,2  , Long Yang1,2  , Xiaodong Chen3  , Qiang Wang1,2  , and Fuqiang Tian4 
1
School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, 2Frontiers Science Center for Critical
Earth Material Cycling, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, 3Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA, 4Department of Hydraulic Engineering, State Key Laboratory of
Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Abstract  Changes in river floods under a changing climate are of worldwide concerns, but relevant
knowledge is limited especially over the East Asia monsoon region. Here we examine changes in flood peak
timing based on the most comprehensive flood data set to date across China during 1961–2017. The temporal
shifts of Chinese flood peak timing range from −19.0 days earlier to +14.0 days later per decade. Earlier flood
occurrences are mainly observed in northern China, with delayed flood occurrences in the south. The spatial
pattern of reversed latitudinal changes in flood timing leads to growing spatial extents of concurrent river
floods over China. Soil moisture plays an important role in modulating such changes, despite precipitation
determines the climatological mean dates of flood occurrences. Our results highlight a strong climate signal on
the changes in flood timing over China, and call for coordinated efforts in alleviating expanding flood hazards
related to the changes in flood timing.
Plain Language Summary  Changes of river floods under a changing climate are of worldwide
concerns, but relevant knowledge is still limited especially over East Asian monsoon region. Changes in dates
of flood peak occurrences are preferably investigated to understand how climate change affects river floods.
This is because flood peak timing, compared to flood peak magnitude, is less affected by water (e.g., dams)
and land (e.g., urbanization) management practices. Based on the most comprehensive Chinese flood data set,
we identify a strong climate signal on the changes in flood peak timing over China for the first time. Chinese
floods tend to occur later in the south but earlier in the north over the past several decades. Considering floods
in southern China are typically earlier than those in northern China, the reversed latitudinal changes in flood
peak timing lead to enhanced temporal concentration of flood occurrences (i.e., seasonality) over China, and
is further responsible for flooding with larger spatial extents across China. While monsoon rainfall largely
determines the flood seasonality, we highlight the role of antecedent soil wetness in modulating changes in
flood peak timing. Our results call for trans-basin efforts in alleviating widespread flood hazards over the East
Asian Monsoon region.
1. Introduction
River floods are among the deadliest natural hazards worldwide. Substantial increases in economic damage from
disastrous floods have raised demands for improved understandings of flood changes in terms of magnitude,
frequency, and timing (e.g., Merz et al., 2021; Tellman et al., 2021). This is particularly a critical issue for East
Asia, where more than two-thirds of global future flood losses occur and more than half of the future population
will be affected by floods (Dottori et  al.,  2018). The dominance of monsoon climate also makes East Asian
countries important places to investigate whether there are consistent regional changes of river floods under a
changing climate (Blöschl et al., 2017; Hall et al., 2014), but such investigations are still limited.
Compared to magnitude, flood peak timing is relatively less affected by water (e.g., reservoirs) and land manage-
ment practices (e.g., urbanization) (Blöschl et al., 2017; Villarini, 2016), and is preferably adopted to understand
changes of river floods under a changing climate (Dickinson et  al.,  2019; Ficchì & Stephens,  2019; Wasko
et al., 2020a, 2020b; Xu et al., 2021). Previous studies highlight the role of basin-averaged precipitation at differ-
ent temporal scales and antecedent watershed conditions (e.g., soil moisture, snow coverage, temperature) in
determining flood peak timing (Blöschl et al., 2017; Wasko et al., 2020a; Ye et al., 2017). For instance, Wasko
et al. (2020a) identified stronger influences of antecedent soil moisture, compared to precipitation, in changing
1 of 10

Software: Yixin Yang, Long Yang
Supervision: Long Yang
Validation: Yixin Yang, Long Yang,
Fuqiang Tian
Visualization: Yixin Yang, Long Yang
Writing – original draft: Yixin Yang,
Long Yang
Writing – review & editing: Yixin
Yang, Long Yang, Xiaodong Chen, Qiang
Wang, Fuqiang Tian
YANG ET AL.
Earth’s Future 10.1029/2022EF002726
annual flood peak timing over 221 watersheds across Australia. The role of soil moisture is also highlighted
in modulating changes in flood peak magnitudes (Do, Mei, & Gronewold, 2020; Huang et al., 2021; Sharma
et al., 2018). These insights are further applied to develop a conceptual framework of predicting changes in flood
peak timing globally (Do, Westra, et al., 2020). However, understanding changes in flood peak timing for the East
Asian monsoon region is still challenging. This is mainly due to the mixed behaviors of diverse flood-producing
storms (e.g., Yang, Yang, Villarini, et al., 2021). Changes in precipitation over China are associated with the
space-time dynamics of summer monsoon, landfalling tropical cyclones and extratropical synoptic systems (e.g.,
Tang et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2019, 2020; Zhou et al., 2020). Given the pronounced seasonality of precipitation
and the prevalence of rainfall-runoff floods (e.g., Yang, Yang, Villarini, et al., 2021), it remains elusive to what
extent soil moisture can modulate changes in flood peak timing over East Asia. This knowledge gap further
impedes the global assessment of flood changes under both historical and future climates.
Understanding changes in flood peak timing is additionally driven by a growing concern of disastrous conse-
quences associated with floods that cover large spatial extents or occur simultaneously (i.e., synchronous floods,
Berghuijs et al., 2019; Brunner, Gilleland, et al., 2020; Kemter et al., 2020; Uhlemann et al., 2010). These floods
often lead to stronger societal and economic influences than local flood events (Jongman et al., 2015; Tellman
et  al.,  2021), with the 1927 Mississipi River flood (Smith & Baeck,  2015), the 2002 Austrian Danube flood
(Blöschl et al., 2013), and the 1998/1999 Yangtze River flood (Kundzewicz et al., 2019; Li et al., 2013; Zong &
Chen, 2000) as some of those “poster-children” floods around the world. Berghuijs et al. (2019) characterizes
the spatial extent of synchronous floods (i.e., flood synchrony scale) for each stream gaging station as the radial
distance within which 50% stations experience simultaneous flood peaks. Their results highlight the growing
spatial extents of river floods across Europe (Berghuijs et  al.,  2019; Kemter et  al.,  2020). Since river floods
demonstrate strong dependence on meteorological drivers and land-surface processes (e.g., Brunner, Papalexiou,
et  al.,  2020; Deidda et  al.,  2021), the space-time structure of synchronous floods can be indirectly examined
through changes in flood peak timing. This can be especially applicable for East Asian countries where the
climatological mean dates of rainfall and flooding are driven by East Asian summer monsoon (e.g., Ding &
Chan, 2005; Gu et al., 2017). Later onset of summer monsoon leads to enhanced rainfall over southern China
(e.g., Xing et al., 2015). For instance, the phenomenal 1998/1999 Yangtze River flood is characterized with a
later onset of summer monsoon by about 5–10 days (Ding & Liu, 2001).
In this study, we characterize flood peak timing and their temporal variations based on empirical analyses of
the most comprehensive flood timing data set over China. We further characterize flood synchrony scale by
developing an innovative approach based on a machine-learning algorithm, Density-Based Spatial Clustering of
Applications with Noise (DBSCAN, Ester et al., 1996), and establish the connections between changes in flood
peak timing and synchronous flood hazards by taking China as an example. Possible links between synchronous
flood hazards and potential climate drivers will also be explored. Relevant knowledge obtained from China can
shed light on the changing behaviors of flood hazards over East Asia which is underrepresented in the existing
global flood studies (Do, Westra, et al., 2020; Wasko et al., 2020b).
2.  Data and Methods
Our analysis is based on continuous records of annual flood peaks from 1,279 stream gaging stations over China
(see Figure S1 in Supporting Information  S1 for details). Each station has at least 40-year records of annual
maximum instantaneous flood peak discharge (including magnitude and date of occurrence) during the period
1961–2017. These stations are densely distributed over eastern China, with 1,031 of them located within the
domain of East Asia n Summer Monsoon region (EASM, Figure S1 in Supporting Information S1). The data
set has been through strict quality-control procedures (see Yang et al., 2019 for details). Flood records subject
to notable influences of water and land management were excluded. There are a few stations that might have
been affected by human interventions but will likely have little impacts on the large-scale pattern of changes in
flood peak timing (also see Yang, Yang, Villarini, et al., 2021 for details). The date of each annual flood peak
is converted to day of the calendar year, and is further used to estimate the linear trend magnitudes based on the
adjusted Sen’s slope (that explicitly address data circularity, see Text S1 in Supporting Information S1). The mean
dates of annual flood peaks and their seasonal concentration are examined based on circular statistics (see Text
S1 in Supporting Information S1, Berens, 2009; Pewsey et al., 2013).
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We explore the possible links between temporal changes of annual flood peak and potential climate drivers (i.e.,
annual maximum 7-day precipitation and annual maximum 7-day soil moisture) based on circular correlation
coefficient (i.e., that measures the association between two directional variables) and the consistency of their
mean trends (Jammalamadaka & Sarma, 1988; Jammalamadaka & Sengupta, 2001). The middle day of the 7-day
period represents the timing of annual maximum 7-day precipitation and 7-day soil moisture, respectively (see
also Blöschl et al., 2017). A 0.25° daily gridded precipitation data set (i.e., CN05) interpolated from 2,416 mete-
orological stations across China is used to analyze precipitation changes. The CN05 rainfall product captures the
spatial and temporal rainfall patterns over China (Wu & Gao, 2013). The soil moisture product is provided by
the land component of the fifth generation of European Reanalysis (hereafter ERA5). The ERA5 soil moisture
product is generated through assimilation of both in-situ observations and satellite retrievals into a high-resolu-
tion land surface model (Balsamo et al., 2015). The spatial and temporal resolution of the product is 0.25° (about
31 km) and 1-hr, respectively. Previous studies show good performance of the ERA5 product in capturing the
spatial and temporal variability of top-layer soil moisture over China (Li, Wu, & Ma, 2020; Li, Wu, Ma, Lv, &
Yang 2020; Sun et al., 2021). We integrate the hourly volumetric soil wetness at the top layer (i.e., 0–7 cm) into
daily scale for further analyses.

We propose an innovative approach to characterize flood synchrony scale by following the generic definition of a
synchronous flood, that is, stream gaging stations in the same neighborhood that experience annual flood peaks
simultaneously (e.g., within the same time window). We identify each synchronous flood event through a spatial
clustering algorithm DBSCAN. Compared to conventional spatial clustering algorithms (e.g., K-means, Everitt
et al., 2011), DBSCAN automatically determines the optimal number of spatial clusters as well as the noises (i.e.,
outliers) according to the spatial density of samples (Ester et al., 1996). The identification procedures for flood
synchrony scale are elaborated below.

We set up a 15-day moving time window starting from the first date of occurrence of annual flood peaks across
all stations for a specific year. We use 15 days to account for the entire flood-generation and routing processes for
basins ranging from 10 km 2 to 2 million km 2 (Boyd, 1978). For each moving window, stations with their flood
peaking timing falling into this window are automatically clustered in space with DBSCAN. The two hyperpa-
rameters (i.e., neighborhood scale ε and minimum number of points MinPts) are determined based on the sorted
k-nearest neighbor approach (Ester et al., 1996, Figure S2 in Supporting Information S1). We determine the opti-
mal ε by objectively detecting the “knee” of each k-nearest neighbor plot (Text S2 in Supporting Information S1).
The optimal MinPts is set to 10 (with additional sensitive experiments, Text S2 in Supporting Information S1).
We use a convex hull-shape polygon to spatially envelop each cluster, with its areal coverage representing the
influential area of a synchronous flood. Since there might be more than one synchronous flood cluster within
the same time window, we accumulate the areal coverages of individual spatial cluster as the flood synchrony
scale for the window. The moving window, capable of considering all possible spatial clusters of floods across
the  country, runs through the last date of annual flood peaks across all stations for the year. The mean accumu-
lated areal coverage of all non-overlapping time windows represents the flood synchrony scale for the year. The
procedures are repeated through the calendar years of 1961–2017. Similarly, we identify the synchrony scale of
annual maximum 7-day precipitation based on the gridded rainfall product CN05.

3. Results
Chinese flood peaks predominantly occur between May and September, with the earliest annual flood peak
occurrences around May to June in the middle Yangtze River and Pearl River. Annual flood peaks then occur
in July and August over the North China Plain and northeastern China (Figure 1a). This is consistent with the
rhythm of rainbelt movement driven by EASM (e.g., Ding & Chan, 2005; Wang & Ding, 2008). Landfalling trop-
ical cyclones play an important role in producing extreme rainfall and river floods along the southeastern coast
(Yang et al., 2020; Yang, Yang, & Smith, 2021). For northeastern China, extratropical systems (e.g., westerly jet)
are responsible for annual flood peaks in addition to summer monsoon (Gao & Gao, 2018; Tang et al., 2021).
Extratropical systems associated with moisture transport additionally characterize the timing of annual flood
peaks in northwestern China (Figure  1a). The propagation of East Asia and South Asia summer monsoons
collectively determine the mean dates of occurrences of annual flood peaks in southwestern China (i.e., from
late June to August, e.g., Xiong et al., 2019). Despite the roles of different rainfall systems in flood-generation

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processes,  the mean resultant length of flood seasonality exceeds 0.7 almost
across the entire country, indicating a strong seasonal concentration of flood
occurrences over China (Figure 1a). Weak flood seasonality (i.e., with mean
resultant length smaller than 0.7) is partially tied to the complexities in
runoff-generation processes, including snowmelt, rain-on-snow, and rain-on-
ice. The snowmelt-driven floods (i.e., early spring) are mainly observed in
the high-mountains of Tibetan Plateau and northeastern China. These floods
account for a small percentage of annual flood records compared to rain-
fall-runoff floods (Yang, Yang, Villarini, et al., 2021).

Changes in annual flood peak timing vary between −19.0 days (i.e., earlier)
and +14.0  days (i.e., delayed) per decade across China (Figure  1b). There
are 592 (584) stations with positive (negative) trends in the changes of flood
peak timing, accounting for 46.3% (45.6%) of total stations. 102 out of 1,279
stations show significant trends in flood peak timing (P ≤ 0.05). An inter-
esting finding is the spatial contrast of changes in flood peak timing, with
positive trends (i.e., delayed flood occurrences) mainly observed in south-
ern China and negative trends (i.e., earlier flood occurrence) in the north of
the Yellow River. For instance, 42 of 56 stations with significantly earlier
flood occurrences (P  ≤  0.05) are located in northern and western China
(mainly including the Yellow River basin, North China Plain, northeastern
China), while 32 of 46 stations with significantly delayed flood occurrences
are observed in the Yangtze River basin, Pearl River basin, and southeast-
ern China. The spatial pattern is consistent with that based only on those
significant stations (Figure S3 in Supporting Information S1), demonstrating
a sharp contrast of changes in flood timing between northern and southern
China. The spatial pattern highlights a strong signal of climate impacts on
river floods over China.

To further shed light on the spatial contrast of changes in flood peak timing,
stations within the EASM region (i.e., the eastern part of the country) are
grouped into 1.5° latitudinal bands (Figure 2). The spatial pattern of flood
peak timing, that is, ranging from early floods in southern China (i.e., starting
from 25°N) to late in the north (around 42.5–45°N), is further highlighted
by the mean dates of flood occurrences for each band (Figure  2a). Late
floods south of 25°N are predominately associated with tropical cyclones
making landfall during late August and September, while early floods north
Figure 1.  Seasonality and temporal trends in annual flood peak timing during of 42.5°N are related to the propagation of extratropical weather systems
the period 1961–2017. (a) Seasonality of annual flood peaks. Arrows represent and snowmelt. For instance, there is an advanced occurrence of annual flood
mean dates of annual flood peaks, with the length indicates the seasonal peaks relative to annual maximum 7-day precipitation north of 42.5°N. This
concentration. (b) Regional trend of annual flood peak timing (in days per is mainly due to the mixture of snowmelt-driven floods (i.e., early spring)
decade). Negative (positive) trends indicate earlier (delayed) flood peak
and rainfall-runoff (i.e., warm season) in northeastern China (Yang, Yang,
timing. Stations with significant trends (n = 102, P < 0.05) are highlighted
using larger scatters with black edges. Regional trends are estimated based Villarini, et al., 2021).
on auto-Kriging interpolation (see Table S1 in Supporting Information S1
For the regions with early flood occurrences (around 25–32.5°N), annual
for parameters, Hiemstra et al., 2009). Uncertainty of interpolation exists for
northwestern China due to the limited number of stations. Four black lines flood peaks tend to be delayed, with the positive trends gradually diminished
toward higher latitudes (around 32.5–40°N). On the contrary, earlier floods
from north to south represent the Liao River, the Yellow River, the Huai River,
the Yangtze River, and the Pearl River, respectively. (i.e., negative trends, Figure 2b) are observed over regions with climatolog-
ically late mean dates of flood occurrences (around 40–45°N). The spatial
pattern of reversed latitudinal changes in flood peak timing highlights a
narrowing tendency of the existing contrast in the seasonal distribution of annual flood peak occurrences between
northern and southern China (also see Figure 1a). The magnitudes of regional trends (i.e., around ±2 days per
decade) are significant considering that the existing difference of mean flood peak occurrences is less than
30  days (Figure  2a). Additional analyses based on different groups of latitudinal bands show similar results
(Figures S4 and S5 in Supporting Information S1).

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 Earth’s Future 10.1029/2022EF002726

Figure 2.  Boxplots for mean occurrences (a) and trends (b) of annual flood peaks and annual maximum 7-day precipitation
averaged over latitudinal bands. Scatters indicate mean values while error bar extends from the 25th percentile to 75th
percentile. The blue solid lines and red dashed lines are fitted trend lines for the mean values of each band for flood and
rainfall, respectively. Gray shadings highlight the latitudinal range of hotspots (see the label for location). Note that all
stations are included in the box plot regardless of their statistical significance in trend analysis.

Annual maximum 7-day precipitation timing is almost consistent with the climatological mean dates of annual
flood peaks over China (Figure  2a). However, changes in the timing of annual maximum 7-day precipitation
alone cannot explain the reversed latitudinal changes in flood peak timing (Figure 2b). This is highlighted by the
discrepancy of latitudinal mean trends between precipitation and flood (Figure 2b). For instance, the mean trends
of flood peak timing are positive around the region of 30–35°N, while precipitation exhibits negative trends in
peak timing. The discrepancy can be partially related to the complexity of precipitation in both space and time.
For instance, later onset of East Asia summer monsoon leads to later occurrences of annual maximum precipita-
tion in southern China (Ding et al., 2020). Changes in monsoon is further complicated by the changing behaviors
of landfalling tropical cyclones that exhibit a notable tendency of poleward migration (Gu et al., 2017; Liu &
Wang, 2020; Lu et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2017). The discrepancy also highlights a critical
role of basin land-surface processes (as characterized by soil moisture conditions) in modulating the timing of
flood peak occurrences. The antecedent watershed wetness prior to the flood peak occurrence as well as the soil
moisture capacity dictate how runoff-generation processes response to the precipitation forcing.

We further delve into the links between changes in flood peak timing with potential climate drivers through anal-
ysis over sub-regions or hotspots (HS) (Table 1 and Figure 3, see Text S3 for details and Figure S1 for locations in
Supporting Information S1). The HS are selected based on the availability of stations with significant trends that
also capture key features of latitudinal band analysis shown above. Annual flood peaks within the HS are asso-
ciated with rainfall-runoff generation processes (see Yang, Yang, Villarini, et al., 2021 for details). We estimate
the mean trend of the mean occurrence dates of annual maximum flood peaks (or annual maximum precipitation
and soil moisture) in each hotspot using the adjusted Sen’s slope estimator. We derive the circular correlation for
each pair of mean annual occurrence dates in each hotspot.

There is a strong circular correlation between precipitation and flood peak timing for Northeastern China (HS1,
R = 0.70, P < 0.001) and the Liao River basin (HS2, R = 0.89, P < 0.001, Figure 3b). For instance, the time
series of annual 7-day maximum precipitation timing is almost identical to that of annual flood peak over the
Liao River basin. This is mainly associated with the dependence of runoff-generation processes on rainfall inten-
sity over this hotspot (i.e., infiltration-excess, Li & Feng, 2009). The soil moisture capacity is large but the soil
moisture content is quite limited for this region, thus runoff generation is mainly constrained by instantaneous
rain rates rather than rainfall accumulations. The opposite is true for the middle Yangtze River (HS6) that shows
a stronger correlation (R = 0.75, P < 0.001) between soil moisture and flood than that between rainfall and flood
(R = 0.54, P < 0.001), highlighting the importance of both accumulated rainfall and antecedent soil wetness

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Table 1
Summary of Flood Timing and Climate Drivers Within Six Hotspots (HS).
Circular correlation coefficient between climatic
Circular trend in timing (days per decade) drivers and annual flood peak timing

ID Hotspot No. of stations Flood Rainfall Soil moisture Rainfall Soil moisture
HS1 Northeast China 40 −4.63** −2.22** 6.81** 0.70** −0.03
HS2 Liao River 41 −2.00** −3.53** −3.26** 0.89** 0.89**
HS3 Lower Yellow River 21 −2.07** −0.35 0.25 0.61** 0.53**
HS4 Middle Yellow River 20 3.09** 0.65 3.40** 0.61** 0.71**
HS5 Huai River 17 4.84** 4.21** 3.41* 0.84** 0.57**
HS6 Middle Yangtze River 32 4.00** 1.51* 2.87** 0.54** 0.75**
Note. The mean trend is estimated using the adjusted Sen’s slope estimator for the mean occurrence dates of annual maximum flood peaks (or annual maximum
precipitation and soil moisture) in each HS (see Figure S1 in Supporting Information S1 for location) during the period 1961–2017. Circular correlation is derived for
each pair of mean annual occurrence dates in each hotspot. * and ** denote p-value smaller than 0.05 and 0.001, respectively. Only stream gaging stations with their
contributing areas entirely falling within the hotspots are included in the analysis (see Table S2 in Supporting Information S1 for details).

Figure 3.  Long-term evolution for the timing of annual flood peaks, annual maximum 7-day precipitation and annual
maximum 7-day soil moisture over six hotspots (HS). The bold lines represent the mean dates of annual flood peaks and two
climatic drivers within each HS, respectively. The shading shows standard deviation of mean dates of occurrences. The time
series are smoothed using a 10-year moving average filter to maintain their decadal variations. Only stream gaging stations
with their contributing areas entirely falling within the HS are included in the analysis (see Text S3 and Table S2 for details in
Supporting Information S1).

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Figure 4.  Spatial and temporal pattern of flood and precipitation synchrony scale over the core of EASM region (i.e.,
25–40°N). (a) Synchrony scale of Typhoon Herb (1996) and the resultant flood. There are three flood clusters during
24 July–7 August 1996. The light red and blue polygons highlight the spatial extents of flood and precipitation clusters,
respectively. Annual synchrony scale (dotted line) of flood (b) and precipitation (c) during the period 1961–2017. The solid
lines in (b) and (c) highlight the linear trends of the time series, with the shading representing the 95% confidence bounds
based on 1,000-times bootstrapping.

in runoff-generation processes (i.e., saturation-excess, e.g., Zhao,  1992; Liu et  al.,  2020). For the Huai River
(HS5), the circular correlation between soil moisture and flood (R = 0.57, P < 0.001) is relatively weaker than
that between rainfall and flood (R = 0.84, P < 0.001), with a comparable trend of rainfall (i.e., 4.21, P < 0.001)
to that of flood timing (i.e., 4.84 days/decade, P < 0.001). This is tied to the frequent influence of monsoon
frontal systems and the resultant extreme rainfall over the Huai and lower Yangtze River basins (e.g., Ding &
Chan, 2005).

For the Lower Yellow River (HS3) and Middle Yellow River (HS4), the correlations are all significant, but their
mean trends are not. For instance, only regional trends of annual maximum monthly soil moisture and flood are
statistically significant (P < 0.001), while the trend of rainfall timing is insignificant (P > 0.1) for the middle
Yellow River (HS4). This highlights the determinant role of soil moisture in flood timing. It is associated with the
soil conservation practices in the middle Yellow River (e.g., afforestation, Bai et al., 2016; Fu et al., 2004; Piao
et al., 2020). For instance, previous analyses show significant decline of soil moisture beyond a depth of 100 cm
(through the enhanced transpiration) in the afforested watersheds over the middle Yellow River (Ren et al., 2018).
This leads to the delayed occurrence of annual maximum 7-day soil moisture content, and thus delayed flood
peaks through holding rainfall-runoff before soil moisture capacity is exceeded. Earlier annual flood peaks are
observed in the lower Yellow River (HS3). This might be associated with intensive irrigation activities and the
increased soil moisture content (i.e., antecedent watershed wetness) during the growing season and thus earlier
runoff-generation potential. The two HS collectively echo the discrepancy of latitude-averaged mean trends
between precipitation and flood peak timing around 32.5–35°N (Figure  2b). Spatial patterns of trends in the
timing of annual maximum 7-day precipitation and soil moisture are consistent with the findings demonstrated in
the HS (see Figure S6 and Figure S7 for details in Supporting Information S1).

Due to the reversed latitudinal changes in annual flood peak timing (Figure  2b), we expect to observe more
synchronous floods across northern and southern China (i.e., the core EASM region, 25–40°N). Annual flood
synchrony scale shows a significantly increasing trend during the period 1961–2017. The trend magnitude is
2,200 km 2 per year based on the Sen’s slope estimator (P = 0.03, Figure 4). The increasing trends exist with
different DBSCAN hyperparameters (Figure S8 and Table S3 in Supporting Information S1). They do not vary
when the missing flood records during the study period are considered or a different time-window for flood clus-
ter identification (i.e., 7-day) is considered (Figure S8 and Text S2 in Supporting Information S1). Take Typhoon
Herb (1996) and the resultant flooding as an example, there are three spatial clusters with annual flood peaks
observed during 24 July–7 August 1996. The largest spatial cluster extends through north of the upper Yangtze
River basin to the lower Yellow River basin, with a spatial coverage of about 720,000 km 2. The other two flood

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clusters are in the upper and middle Yangtze River basin, respectively (Figure 4a). The flood synchrony scale
(i.e., the accumulated areal coverages of three spatial clusters) is around 870,000 km 2 (i.e., account for 20% the
entire EASM region). Extreme rainfall from typhoon Herb (1996) is directly responsible for the two flood clusters
in the middle Yangtze River and the lower Yellow River on its landfall and propagation (Yang et al., 2019). The
widespread synchronous flooding of Typhoon Herb (1996) is tied to the anomalous extension of West Pacific
Subtropical High and synoptic blocking over the high latitudes of East Asia (Zhao, 2000).

The 1993 Yangtze flood demonstrates the largest flood synchrony scale (i.e., 580,000 km 2), followed by the 2016,
1970 floods, respectively. All these widespread flood hazards are associated with strong anomalies in the large-
scale ocean-atmosphere systems (e.g., El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Kundzewicz
et al., 2020). Like flood synchrony scale, we identify significantly increasing trends of the annual precipitation
synchrony scale over China (i.e., 440 km 2 per year, P = 0.08). The spatial coverages of precipitation clusters are
comparable to those of flood clusters (e.g., see Figure 4a for example), highlighting the physical connections
between extreme rainfall and floods over East Asia. However, the time series of flood and precipitation synchrony
scale are weakly correlated (P = 0.14) at a national scale, this might be due to the modulation of soil moisture in
flood peak timing (as also highlighted in the hotspot analysis). The impact of antecedent watershed wetness lead
to diverse runoff response to precipitation that ultimately translate into the space-time structure of synchronous
flooding over the entire country, despite that the climatological mean occurrences of flood peaks are determined
by the timing of extreme precipitation for individual basins.

4.  Concluding Remarks

We investigate changes in flood timing over China based on empirical analysis of a comprehensive flood data
set together with a machine-learning approach that characterize synchronous floods and their spatiotemporal
changes. We highlight a strong signal of climate impacts on river floods that is characterized by latitudinal
reversed changes in flood peak timing over China. The reversed latitudinal changes are consistent with the grow-
ing spatial extents of synchronous floods in the past six decades. While extreme rainfall determines the mean
occurrence date of annual flood peaks, modulation of soil moisture at regional scale leads to weak correlation
between flood and precipitation synchrony scale. This is because changes in soil moisture (induced by either
the replenishment through intentional irrigation or the depletion through enhanced transpiration processes) are
responsible for diverse basin-scale flood response to precipitation forcing. Our nation-wide analysis provides
improved characterization of flood changes over China that can be further used to validate the performance of
large-scale flood models at a national scale. Future studies can take advantage of hydrological modeling frame-
work as well as improved characterization of soil moisture to better understand the drivers of these changes. Local
practices of flood management (e.g., regulation of reservoirs) need to consider changes in flood peak timing. This
can be a critical issue for the high latitudes of China that are expecting earlier annual maximum flood peaks. The
evidence of increased flood synchrony scale over China, together with previous European-wide analysis (Berghu-
ijs et al., 2019; Kemter et al., 2020), reveal an emerging pattern of changes in river flood hazards under a changing
climate. While local practices of flood management are still important, the growing spatial extents of river floods
call for coordinated efforts across basins in alleviating the expanding flood hazards related to the changes in flood
timing. For instance, the Ministry of Water Resources, China launches strategic plans every 5 years for improving
flood-control engineering and non-engineering systems. While these plans are essentially enforced at the basin
scale, it is imperative to develop strategies to cope with widespread flooding across basins. This involves with
information sharing, resources optimization, and integrated emergency management across basins.

Data Availability Statement

The flood timing data set is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6578833. The CN05 daily precipita-
tion product is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16674484. The ERA5 soil moisture product is
available at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels. The programs used
to generate all the results are MATLAB (R2019b), R Studio (version 12.1335) and the Jupyter Notebook. The
scripts are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16342239. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

YANG ET AL. 8 of 10

Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the Natural
Science Foundation of China (51825902,
52009055), the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities
(0209-14380104) and the Research Funds
for the Frontiers Science Center for
Critical Earth Material Cycling, Nanjing
University. X.C. is supported by the U.S.
Department of Energy Office of Science
Biological and Environmental Research
as part of the Regional and Global
Model Analysis program area. PNNL is
operated Battelle Memorial Institute for
the Department of Energy under contract
DE-AC05-76RL01830.
YANG ET AL.
Earth’s Future 10.1029/2022EF002726
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