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

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.

“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.
“However, when warm, moist air brings more rainfall, or when extreme events such as flash floods occur, the local infrastructure, including houses, roads, greenhouses and pipelines, is more likely to be damaged.”
Hotan prefecture, in Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin, exceeded its average annual precipitation in just three hours on June 20, recording more than 53mm (two inches) of rain. Floodwaters swept through the region, cutting off roads and leaving vehicles stranded.
According to state media reports, the sustained rainfall along the southern edge of the desert caused river flows to rise sharply, with some monitoring sections approaching warning levels.
Videos circulating on social media over the weekend showed floodwaters rushing across stretches of expressway, undermining roadside foundations and carving deep gullies into the landscape.
Xu said the downpour was unprecedented in local records. “Strong convective storms do occur intermittently in these regions, but data from the Hotan meteorological station shows this was the heaviest rainfall event on record.”
According to Xu, convective storms form when warm, moisture-laden air from the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean is channelled towards Xinjiang and Tibet and collides with a relatively strong, cold, high-pressure system moving from Central Asia.
The interaction between the contrasting air masses, combined with the hot, dry desert surface, generates intense rainfall across southern and western Xinjiang. The rapid run-off from mountain catchments, together with snow-melt, then triggers floods.
Northwestern China, deep within the Eurasian continent and far from any ocean, is among the driest regions in the world. Abundant sunshine and strong solar radiation have historically driven high evaporation rates, reinforcing its arid climate.

Yet the region has become noticeably warmer and wetter in recent decades, with official data showing a rise in temperatures for Xinjiang of 0.34 degrees Celsius per decade since 1961, according to a state news agency Xinhua report in November.
Annual precipitation increased by 5.7mm per decade over the same period, the report said.
This change has had a far-reaching impact on local agriculture. One positive outcome is that it has made it possible to cultivate crops such as apples and cotton on a much larger scale.
However, Xu noted that much of Xinjiang still received less than 100mm of rainfall annually and remained arid.
“Even a gradual increase in rainfall is unlikely to fundamentally alter the region’s vegetation patterns,” he said, adding that agricultural development depended more heavily on elements such as advances in cultivation techniques and modern irrigation systems.
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