78 / 2023-03-20 14:32:54

Long-term change in surface air temperature in Chinese mainland over period 1901-2020

Climate change · Surface air temperature · Diurnal temperature range · Trend · Chinese mainland

The long-term surface climate warming magnitude over some regions like Chinese mainland is still uncertain due to the lack of early-year observational data. In this paper, the monthly data series of the average, maximum and minimum temperatures in Chinese mainland during 1901-2020 were constructed based on the surface air temperature observations from 60 stations across the country, and the characteristics of the average, maximum,minimum temperature and diurnal temperature range (DTR) changes were analyzed. Results show that: 1) Regional average annual mean temperature in Chinese mainland rose by 0.14 °C per decade, maximum temperature rose by 0.07 °C per decade, minimum temperature rose by 0.19 °C per decade, and DTR decreased by 0.13 °C per decade. All these trends are statistically significant (p < 0.01); 2) The largest annual mean maximum temperature increase occurred in spring, followed by winter and autumn/summer, and the largest annual mean minimum temperature increase was in winter and spring, followed by autumn and summer; 3) Annual mean DTR decreased significantly at a rate of -0.08 °C per decade, -0.12 °C per decade, -0.12 °C per decade and -0.13 °C per decade (p < 0.01) in spring, summer autumn and winter, respectively; 4) The stations with the maximum temperature drop were mainly in Central China, southern North China, the southeast coastal areas and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the stations with the minimum temperature increasing significantly were located in North China, Northeast China and Northwest China; 5) The areas with the DTR dropping the fastest were mainly located in the Northeast China and North China. The maximum and minimum temperature series for China based on climate anomaly shows comparable to those based on other currently available datasets，the average temperature series for China shows a warming trend of 0.14 °C per decade during 1901–2015.