Acta Geographica Sinica ›› 2003, Vol. 58 ›› Issue (7s): 1-10.doi: 10.11821/xb20037s001

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Change in Extreme Temperature and Precipitation over Northern China During the Second Half of the 20th Century

ZHAI Panmao, PAN Xiaohua   

  1. National Climate Center, Beijing 100081, China
  • Received:2003-04-03 Revised:2003-07-28 Online:2003-12-25 Published:2003-12-25
  • Supported by:

    "973" Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, G1999043405

Abstract:

Study on change of weather and climate extremes has become an important aspect in modern climate change research. Based on the daily surface air temperature data from 200 stations and daily precipitation data from 739 stations during the second half of the 20th century, schemes for analyzing climate extremes were designed mainly according to percentiles of a non-parametric distribution and the gross errors in the daily data were removed based on a newly designed quality control procedure. The spatial and temporal characteristics of change of climate extremes over northern China were studied. The main conclusions are summarized as follows: 1) The number of days with maximum temperatures over 35oC decreased slightly. The decreasing trends are obvious in the North China Plain and the Hexi Corridor. However, since the 1990s, the extreme hot days increased greatly. Meanwhile, the frost days decreased significantly in northern China, especially in the eastern part of northern China and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Increase trends were found for the 95th percentiles of daily maximum temperatures except in the southern part of North China, while obvious decrease trends were found for the 5th percentiles of daily minimum temperatures. 2) The extreme intense precipitation events obviously increased in much of northwestern China but decreased in the eastern part of northeastern China and most parts of North China. The number of heavy rain days increased in eastern Inner Mongolia and eastern Northeast China, but obviously decreased in the Northeast China Plain and North China.

Key words: intense precipitation, northern China, climate extremes, maximum and minimum temperatures