Climate warming and its impact on natural regional boundaries in China in the 1980s

Abstract

The global climate warming accelerated in the 1980s has become a focus in the world. Based on the month by month and year by year temperature data from 160 representative stations throughout the country during 1951-1999, this paper analyses annual and four seasons’ temperature variations of China since the 1980s. It was found out that the non-equalibrium response with relative great regional and seasonal differences is represented in the country’s climate warming. In regional changes a trend of “warm in the north and cold in the south” occurs whereas in seasonal changes, the characters of “warm in winter and cool in summer” present. Significant verification of the temperature variations conducted in terms of mathematical statistics reveals that a confidence level of over 95% has been basically reached in areas north of the Yangtze River. Meanwhile, according to data of diurnal mean temperature steadily passing through accumulated temperature ≥10°C from 335 stations since 1951 or since the founding of the stations in the early 1950s to 1999, comparative analysis of the data of the last 19 years with that of the first 30 years was conducted and the accumulated temperature ≥10°C and the variation range of the persistent number of days ≥10°C were obtained. It was concluded that a general northward shift of central subtropics, north subtropics, warm temperate zone, mesothermal zone and frigid temperate zone of eastern China was observed. The northward shift of north subtropics and warm temperate zone was obvious but changes of south subtropics and marginal tropics were insignificant. In western China, in addition to southwestern Yunnan, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and western Inner Mongolia where the temperature zones of each either shifted northward or trended to move upward, not much changes were found in other areas or they shifted southward slightly and declined.