Abstract
Annual and seasonal precipitation data for 49 meteorological stations over the period of 1960–2006 in Liaoning province were analyzed. Liaoning experienced province-wide decreases in precipitation over the 47-year period, with annual precipitation decreasing by 96% of the stations, followed by 92, 84, 63, and 27%, respectively, for summer, autumn, spring, and winter precipitation. Regional trend analysis confirmed the province-wide decrease, which was detected by the site-specific analysis, but a greater number of significant declines were found for annual, summer, and autumn precipitation for Liaoning province and for three of its four subregions. Four significant cycles with alternation patterns were detected mainly at the time scales of 3–5, 10-11, 20–23, and 31.2 years for each of the four subregions (Liaodong Peninsula, Northeastern Mountain, Western Highland, and Central Plain) and the entire Liaoning province, with the dominant periodicities being 10-11 years. The 10-11-year periodic variation of Liaoning annual precipitation was negatively associated with sunspot activity and positively associated with the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) at the same time scale, while the 31.2-year periodic variation of Liaoning annual precipitation was positively correlated with both the EASM and ENSO activities at the 30–33-year time scale.
Highlights
Global climate has undergone significant and unprecedented changes during the past 100 years [1, 2]
The results demonstrate that 96% (46) of the meteorological stations have negative trends in annual precipitation (Table 1), among which three stations (Changtu, Xifeng, and Xiuyan) exhibit a statistically significant negative trend, which occurs in Liaodong Peninsula and the southern part of Northeastern Mountain (Figure 4(a))
Zhao et al [24] reported that the greatest decrease of annual precipitation was −3.19 mm year−1 at Dalian station, with the small difference mainly attributed to different site densities and different lengths for the precipitation series
Summary
Global climate has undergone significant and unprecedented changes during the past 100 years [1, 2]. Spatiotemporal trends of precipitation have received increasing attention throughout the world in the past decades [1, 7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Some’e et al [10] analyzed spatiotemporal trends in precipitation and concluded that a noticeable decrease in winter precipitation was observed in northern Iran and the coasts of the Caspian Sea. Zhang et al [11] studied spatial-temporal precipitation in China over the period of 1956 to 2000 and showed that decreasing precipitation prevailed in the spring and autumn, with winter months receiving increased precipitation. Liang et al [14] reported that the mean annual and summer precipitation decreased in a southeastern to northwestern trajectory throughout a 48-year period (1961 to 2008) over 98 meteorological stations in Northeast China, of which 77 and 80 climate stations showed decreasing annual and summer trends, respectively
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