Assessing the impacts of climate anomalies on plague risk in China during 1754–1949

Plague, a disease influenced by climatic and social factors, has historically caused devastating disasters in China. However, limited data availability has hindered our understanding of the relationship between climate, social conditions, and plague. Here we address a critical data gap by collecting and digitizing county-level plague grade data from China during 1754-1949 together with socio-climatic factors. Our high spatiotemporal resolution statistical analyses unraveled the complex dynamics shaped by climate and social factors. Both excessive and insufficient precipitation heightened plague risks, with dryness in the previous year posing a greater risk, showing regional variations. Specifically, in northern China, each additional level of dryness from the previous year results in an excess risk of 28.4% (95%CI: 11.3%-48.2%), surpassing the 6.9% (95%CI: -0.2%-14.5%) increase observed in southern China. Notably, during social anomalies like famines and migrations, dryness increased plague outbreak risk, not wetness. This may be attributed to these socially anomalous events closely associated with dryness, which weaken the human immune system and intensify human-wildlife interactions. These findings provide insights into plague outbreak mechanisms from a climate-social co-action perspective and highlight the importance of elucidating the complex relationship between climate and social factors in century-scale infectious disease research.