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This paper provides new evidence of regional warming trends from local Chinese observations covering the period 1951–2010. We used satellite-derived land data and weighted urban and rural temperature records (a weighted method) and estimate the regional warming trend, which involves natural climate change and human impact. The annual warming rate over the whole of China is 0.21 ± 0.02 °C/decade. The seasonal warming is 0.30 ± 0.05 °C/decade (Winter), 0.24 °C ± 0.03 °C/decade (Spring); 0.16 ± 0.02 °C/decade (Summer) and 0.21 ± 0.03 °C/decade (Autumn). The mean warming trend is lower than previous estimates (e.g. NMIC, CRU-China) using un-weighted methods (arithmetic average of all records). The warming difference between the weighted and un-weighted accounts for 27 % (12 %) of the NMIC (CRU-China) un-weighted estimate on the total warming. This indicates that previous estimations overestimated a regional warming trend. The differences can be partly attributed to the weighting of the urban effect which is taken into consideration in this study, resulting in a much slower temperature increase. Spatially, the northern part of China shows a larger difference than the south especially for winter and spring. We argue that it is of importance to take into consideration the influence of urban land-use change to improve the physical understanding of surface warming in China over past decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenged by insufficient water resources and by degraded water quality caused by widespread pollution, China faces an imbalance between the supply and the demand of water for supporting the rapid social and economic development while protecting the natural environment and ecosystems. Climate change is expected to further stress freshwater resources and widen the gap between the demand for and supply of water. As a legacy of the earlier planned economy, water resources management has been primarily supply-driven, which largely fails to account for the economic nature of water resources in relation to their natural characteristics. This paper presents a historical perspective on the water resources management policies and practices in China, and recommends demand management and pollution control as key measures for improving water resources management to adapt to climate change based on the current political, socio-economic and water resources conditions. The past and future impacts of climate change on water resources in China and the general adaptation strategies are also presented. How demand management through increasing water use efficiency, improving water rights and rights trade, and effective regulation enforcement, along with pollution control could improve China's water resources management are discussed in details. Ultimately, China should develop a sustainable water resources management strategy based on both supply- and demand-side management options to make the limited water supplies meet the demands of economic development, social well-being and the conservation of ecosystems in the context of global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates of forest vegetation carbon storage in China varied due to different methods used in the assessments. In this paper, we estimated the forest vegetation carbon storage from the Fourth Forest Inventory Data (FFID) in China using a modified volume-derived method. Results showed that total carbon storage and mean carbon density of forest vegetation in China were 3.8 Pg C (about 1.1% of the global vegetation carbon stock) and 41.32 Mg/ha, respectively. In addition, based on linear multiple regression equation and factor analysis method, we analyzed contributions of biotic and abiotic factors (including mean forest age, mean annual temperature, annual precipitation, and altitude) to forest carbon storage. Our results indicated that forest vegetation carbon storage was more sensitive to changes of mean annual temperature than other factors, suggesting that global warming would seriously affect the forest carbon storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]