Guoyu Ren

Urbanization Effects on Observed Surface Air Temperature Trends in North China

A dataset of 282 meteorological stations including all of the ordinary and national basic/reference surface stations of north China is used to analyze the urbanization effect on surface air temperature trends. These stations are classified into rural, small city, medium city, large city, and metropolis based on the updated information of total population and specific station locations. The significance of urban warming effects on regional average temperature trends is estimated using monthly mean temperature series of the station group datasets, which undergo inhomogeneity adjustment. The authors found that the largest effect of urbanization on annual mean surface air temperature trends occurs for the large-city station group, with the urban warming being 0.16°C (10 yr) 1 , and the effect is the smallest for the small-city station group with urban warming being only 0.07°C (10 yr) 1 . A similar assessment is made for the dataset of national basic/reference stations, which has been widely used in regional climate change analyses in China. The results indicate that the regional average annual mean temperature series, as calculated using the data from the national basic/reference stations, is significantly impacted by urban warming, and the trend of urban warming is estimated to be 0.11°C (10 yr) 1 . The contribution of urban warming to total annual mean surface air temperature change as estimated with the national basic/reference station dataset reaches 37.9%. It is therefore obvious that, in the current regional average surface air temperature series in north China, or probably in the country as a whole, there still remain large effects from urban warming. The urban warming bias for the regional average temperature anomaly series is corrected. After that, the increasing rate of the regional annual mean temperature is brought down from 0.29°C (10 yr) 1 to 0.18°C (10 yr) 1 , and the total change in temperature approaches 0.72°C for the period analyzed.

Implications of temporal change in urban heat island intensity observed at Beijing and Wuhan stations

[1] Temporal change in urbanization-induced warming at two national basic meteorological stations of China and its contribution to the overall warming are analyzed. Annual and seasonal mean surface air temperature for time periods of 1961∼2000 and 1981∼2000 at the two stations of Beijing and Wuhan Cities and their nearby rural stations all significantly increase. Annual and seasonal urbanization-induced warming for the two periods at Beijing and Wuhan stations is also generally significant, with the annual urban warming accounting for about 65∼80% of the overall warming in 1961∼2000 and about 40∼61% of the overall warming in 1981∼2000. This result along with the previous researches indicates a need to pay more attention to the urbanization-induced bias probably existing in the current surface air temperature records of the national basic stations.

Recent Progress in Studies of Climate Change in China

An overview of basic research on climate change in recent years in China is presented. In the past 100 years in China, average annual mean surface air temperature (SAT) has increased at a rate ranging from 0.03°C (10 yr)−1 to 0.12°C (10 yr)−1. This warming is more evident in northern China and is more significant in winter and spring. In the past 50 years in China, at least 27% of the average annual warming has been caused by urbanization. Overall, no significant trends have been detected in annual and/or summer precipitation in China on a whole for the past 100 years or 50 years. Both increases and decreases in frequencies of major extreme climate events have been observed for the past 50 years. The frequencies of extreme temperature events have generally displayed a consistent pattern of change across the country, while the frequencies of extreme precipitation events have shown only regionally and seasonally significant trends. The frequency of tropical cyclone landfall decreased slightly, but the frequency of sand/dust storms decreased significantly. Proxy records indicate that the annual mean SAT in the past a few decades is the highest in the past 400–500 years in China, but it may not have exceeded the highest level of the Medieval Warm Period (1000–1300 AD). Proxy records also indicate that droughts and floods in eastern China have been characterized by continuously abnormal rainfall periods, with the frequencies of extreme droughts and floods in the 20th century most likely being near the average levels of the past 2000 years. The attribution studies suggest that increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere are likely to be a main factor for the observed surface warming nationwide. The Yangtze River and Huaihe River basins underwent a cooling trend in summer over the past 50 years, which might have been caused by increased aerosol concentrations and cloud cover. However, natural climate variability might have been a main driver for the mean and extreme precipitation variations observed over the past century. Climate models generally perform well in simulating the variations of annual mean SAT in China. They have also been used to project future changes in SAT under varied GHG emission scenarios. Large uncertainties have remained in these model-based projections, however, especially for the projected trends of regional precipitation and extreme climate events.

Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of Beijing Urban Heat Island Intensity

An hourly dataset of automatic weather stations over Beijing Municipality in China is developed and is employed to analyze the spatial and temporal characteristics of urban heat island intensity (UHII) over the built-up areas. A total of 56 stations that are located in the built-up areas [inside the 6th Ring Road (RR)] are considered to be urban sites, and 8 stations in the suburban belts surrounding the built-up areas are taken as reference sites. The reference stations are selected by using a remote sensing method. The urban sites are further divided into three areas on the basis of the city RRs. It is found that the largest UHII generally takes place inside the 4th RR and that the smallest ones occur in the outer belts of the built-up areas, between the 5th RR and the 6th RR, with the areas near the northern and southern 6th RR experiencing the weakest UHI phenomena. On a seasonal basis, the strongest UHII generally occurs in winter and weak UHII is dominantly observed in summer and spring. The UHII diurnal variations for each of the urban areas are characterized by a steadily strong UHII stage from 2100 local solar time (LST) to 0600 LST and a steadily weak UHII stage from 1100 to 1600 LST, with the periods 0600‐1100 LST and 1600‐2100 LST experiencing a swift decline and rise, respectively. UHII diurnal variation is seen throughout the year, but the steadily strong UHII stage at night is longer(shorter) and the steadily weak UHII stage during the day is shorter (longer)during winter and autumn (summer and spring).

A Remote-Sensing Method of Selecting Reference Stations for Evaluating Urbanization Effect on Surface Air Temperature Trends

AbstractIn the global lands, the bias of urbanization effects still exits in the surface air temperature series of many city weather stations to a certain extent. Reliable reference climate stations need to be selected for the detection and correction of the local manmade warming bias. The underlying image data of remote sensing retrieval is adopted in this study to obtain the spatial distribution of surface brightness temperature, and the surface air temperature reference stations are determined based on the locations of the weather stations in the remote sensing surface thermal fields. Among the 672 national reference climate stations and national basic weather stations of mainland China, for instance, 113 surface air temperature reference stations are selected for applying this method. Compared with the average surface air temperature series of the reference stations obtained by a more sophisticated method developed in China, this method is proven to be robust and applicable, and can be adopted for the...

Inconsistencies of precipitation in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau between surface adjusted data and reanalysis

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the source of many Asian river systems and serves as “the Asian water tower”. Precipitation variability is a strong component of both hydrological processes and energy cycles, and the study of precipitation in the TP is of great importance in the content of global warming. In this study, the annual and seasonal (spring: MAM; summer: JJA; autumn: SON; and winter: DJF) variations in precipitation are investigated in the eastern and central TP during 1961–2007, based on surface raw and adjusted observations as well as both NCEP/NCAR (1961–2007) and ERA-40 (1961–2001) reanalyses. The adjusted precipitation in the TP is higher than raw values on both the annual and seasonal basis due to adjustments of solid precipitation by a bias experiential model. At the annual spring and winter scales, the adjusted precipitation shows a significant increase calculated by the Mann–Kendall trend test. Compared with adjusted precipitation; both NCEP/NCAR and ERA-40 reanalyses capture the broad spatial distributions of mean annual and seasonal precipitation, but are less good at repeating the decadal variability. Both reanalyses show the drying phenomena in most regions and fail to represent the change patterns of precipitation observed by the adjusted observations. Both NCEP/NCAR and ERA-40 have larger inconsistencies which may be caused by the differences between actual and model topography. This suggests that it is crucial to use the adjusted precipitation in the climate research and reanalysis products should be paid more attention in the TP.

Present and projected degree days in China from observation, reanalysis and simulations

Abstract Degree days are usually defined as the accumulated daily mean temperature varying with the base temperature, and are one of the most important indicators of climate changes. In this study, the present-day and projected changes of four degree days indices from daily mean surface air temperature output simulated by Max Planck Institute, Earth Systems Model of low resolution (MPI-ESM-LR) model are evaluated with the high resolution gridded-observation dataset and two modern reanalyses in China. During 1979–2005, the heating degree days (HDD) and the numbers of HDD (NHDD) have decreased for observation, reanalyses (ERA-Interim and NCEP/NCAR) and model simulations (historical and decadal experiments), consistent with the increasing cooling degree days (CDD) and the numbers of CDD (NCDD). These changes reflect the general warming in China during the past decades. In most cases, ERA-Interim is closer to observation than NCEP/NCAR and model simulations. There are discrepancies between observation, reanalyses and model simulations in the spatial patterns and regional means. The decadal hindcast/forecast simulation performance of MPI-ESM-LR produce warmer than the observed mean temperature in China during the entire period, and the hindcasts forecast a trend lower than the observed. Under different representative concentration pathway (RCP) emissions scenarios, HDD and NHDD show significant decreases, and CDD and NCDD consistently increase during 2006–2100 under RCP8.5, RCP4.5 and RCP2.6, especially before the mid-21 century. More pronounced changes occur under RCP8.5, which is associated with a high rate of radiative forcing. The 20th century runs reflect the sensitivity to the initial conditions, and the uncertainties in terms of the inter-ensemble are small, whereas the long-term trend is well represented with no differences among ensembles.

Comparative Analysis of China Surface Air Temperature Series for the Past 100 Years

Abstract Temperature change plays a crucial role in global change sciences. In the past several decades, comprehensive findings have been achieved on temperature change in China for the past 100 years. Several time series have been created to illustrate the averaged surface air temperature for the country. The correlations of these series range from 0.73 to 0.97. It is also achieved in better data quality, wider spatial data coverage, improved homogeneity of time series, and enhanced reliability of findings. The results show an annual mean temperature increase by 0.78±0.27°C per 100 years in China for the period 1906–2005. After prolonging the period till 2007, it is found that 2007 is rated as the warmest year in the past 100 years. Although all the series, except one, reflect temperature changes in the eastern part of China before the 1930s, they represent the general temperature change in most parts of the country after the 1930s. Citation Tang, G., Y. Ding, S. Wang, et al., 2010: Comparative analysis of China surface air temperature series for the past 100 years. Adv. Clim. Change Res., 1, doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1248.2010.00011.

An Integrated Procedure to Determine a Reference Station Network for Evaluating and Adjusting Urban Bias in Surface Air Temperature Data

AbstractTrends in surface air temperature (SAT) are a critical indicator for climate change at varied spatial scales. Because of urbanization effects, however, the current SAT records of many urban stations can hardly meet the demands of the studies. Evaluation and adjustment of the urbanization effects on the SAT trends are needed, which requires an objective selection of reference (rural) stations. Based on the station history information from all meteorological stations with long-term records in mainland China, an integrated procedure for determining the reference SAT stations has been developed and is applied in forming a network of reference SAT stations. Historical data from the network are used to assess the urbanization effects on the long-term SAT trends of the stations of the national Reference Climate Network and Basic Meteorological Network (RCN+BMN or national stations), which had been used most frequently in studies of regional climate change throughout the country. This paper describes in d...

Multi-Time-Scale Climatic Variations over Eastern China and Implications for the South–North Water Diversion Project

AbstractMiddle and eastern routes of the South–North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) of China, which are approximately located within the area 28°–42°N and 110°–122°E, are being constructed. This paper investigates the past climatic variations on various time scales using instrumental and proxy data. It is found that annual mean surface air temperature has increased significantly during the past 50–100 years, and winter and spring temperatures in the northern part of the region have undergone the most significant changes. A much more significant increase occurs for annual mean minimum temperature and extreme low temperature than for annual mean maximum temperature and extreme high temperature. No significant trend in annual precipitation is found for the region as a whole for the last 50 and 100 years, although obvious decadal and spatial variation is detectable. A seesaw pattern of annual and summer precipitation variability between the north and the south of the region is evident. Over the last 100 year...