Abstract
The Qilian Mountains region, located on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, is a region in western China that is sensitive to climate change and serves as an important ecological security barrier. Previous studies mostly used meteorological stations to study climate change in the Qilian Mountains; however, due to the known distribution limitations (scarcity and inhomogeneity) of meteorological stations in mountainous areas, relevant results remain inconclusive. To address this issue, we used 30 meteorological stations in and around the Qilian Mountains and the China meteorological forcing dataset (CMFD) with a spatial resolution of 0.1° Ă 0.1° to comprehensively analyse the spatiotemporal distribution of and variation in the air temperature over the Qilian Mountains, with a particular focus on elevation-dependent warming (EDW); then, land surface albedo data from the ERA5-Land and MODIS products were employed to interpret the EDW. The results showed that the annual mean lapse rate in the Qilian Mountains is â0.56 °C/100 m. From 1979 to 2018, the air temperature over the Qilian Mountains experienced a significant upwards trend with an annual mean rate of 0.39 °C/decade, the maximum rate occurring in DecemberâFebruary (DJF, 0.56 °C/decade) and the minimum rate occurring in JuneâAugust (JJA, 0.28 °C/decade). Spatially, significant warming was found in most areas of the Qilian Mountains, and a slight cooling trend was found in the north and southeast. Unlike other typical areas, the Qilian Mountains showed reversed EDW during 1979â2018, i.e., the increasing trends in air temperature decreased with elevation, which was mainly caused by the reversal in EDW over the 1999â2008 period and could be largely explained by the change in land surface albedo.
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