Acta Geographica Sinica ›› 2016, Vol. 71 ›› Issue (1): 142-152.doi: 10.11821/dlxb201601011

• Climate Change • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Change of snowfall/rainfall ratio in the Tibetan Plateau based on a gridded dataset with high resolution during 1961-2013

WANG Jie(), ZHANG Mingjun(), WANG Shengjie, REN Zhengguo, CHE Yanjun, ZHANG Fuxian   

  1. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • Received:2015-06-19 Revised:2015-11-16 Online:2016-01-31 Published:2016-01-15
  • Supported by:
    National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), No.2013CBA01801;National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41461003, No.41161012

Abstract:

Based on the daily precipitation and temperature from a 0.5°×0.5° gridded dataset and meteorological stations during 1961-2013 released by the National Meteorological Information Center, the spatial and temporal changes of annual precipitation, rainfall, snowfall and snowfall/rainfall ratio (S/R) in the Tibetan Plateau in recent 53 years were analyzed by using Sen slope, Mann-Kendall mutation test, IDW (inverse distance-weighted) interpolation and Morlet wavelet. The results indicated that: (1) Generally, precipitation and rainfall show increasing trends by 0.6 mm·a-1 (p < 0.05) and 1.3 mm·a-1 (p < 0.001), respectively, while snowfall and S/R show decreasing trends by 0.6 mm·a-1 (p < 0.01) and 0.5%·a-1 (p < 0.001), respectively. (2) Precipitation and rainfall show increasing trends, but snowfall shows a decreasing trend in most parts of the Tibetan Plateau. On this basis, S/R shows a decreasing trend. (3) Abrupt and cycle analysis shows that the abrupt changes of the precipitation, rainfall, snowfall and S/R occurred in 2005, 2004, 1996 and 1998, respectively. The precipitation, rainfall, snowfall and S/R present cycles of approximately 5 years, 10 years, 16 years and 20 years, respectively. (4) As elevation increases, the trend magnitude for precipitation and rainfall shows a decrease-to-increase trend, and that for snowfall and S/R shows a decreasing trend.

Key words: Tibetan Plateau, gridded dataset, snowfall/rainfall ratio, trend