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Drowning desert: how Xinjiang’s infrastructure could fail under record rain

Unprecedented downpours prompt warning that links and systems adapted to an arid past may struggle to cope with a wetter future

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Two major flood events have occurred along the margins of the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China since the beginning of June. Photo: CCTV
Dannie Pengin Beijing
Rare but intense rainfall in China’s biggest desert that triggered flooding – and damage – across parts of Xinjiang has underscored the growing risks posed by extreme weather in the country’s arid northwest.
According to China Weather Network, the public information platform of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), two major flood events have occurred along the margins of the Taklamakan Desert, a once-arid region, this month.
While warmer, wetter conditions in recent decades made agriculture possible in previously inhospitable areas, bolstering food security, extreme and more frequent rainfall could exact a toll on the region’s fragile ecology and infrastructure, experts said.

Xu Xiaofeng, president of the China Meteorological Service Association and former deputy head of the CMA, said the ecosystems and infrastructure of the country’s northwest could be at greater risk than other regions.

“These regions have long been arid, with fewer rivers, lakes or ponds. That means the land has limited capacity to absorb heavy rainfall, making roads more vulnerable to washouts and farmland more susceptible to flooding,” he said.

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“Many facilities in Xinjiang’s desert and the Gobi are designed for arid conditions – low rainfall, strong winds and large diurnal temperature variations – and over time they have adapted to the local environment.

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