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Numerous circulation indices have been applied in practical climate services focused on regional precipitation. It is beneficial to identify the most influential or decisive indices, but this is difficult with conventional correlation analyses because of the underlying nonlinear mechanisms for precipitation. This paper demonstrates a set of the most influential indices for July–August precipitation in North China, based on the recursive random forest (RRF) method. These decisive circulation indices include the Polar–Eurasia teleconnection, North African subtropical high ridge position, India–Burma trough, Antarctic Oscillation, Northern Hemisphere polar vortex central latitude, North Atlantic Oscillation, and western Pacific subtropical high northern boundary position. Some of these factors have been recognized as directly influential to the regional precipitation, for example, those of the northwestern Pacific subtropical high; however, some are not easily understood. Decision tree (DT) models using these indices were developed to facilitate composite analyses to explain the RRF results. Taking one of the most interesting DT rules as an example, when the North African subtropical high ridge position is sufficiently far south, an anomalous anticyclone occurs in the upstream and an anomalous cyclone in the downstream of North China. This is unfavorable for northward moisture transport in eastern China and hence causes less precipitation in North China than climatology. The present results are not only helpful for improving diagnostic models of regional precipitation, but also enlightening for exploring how global climate change could impact a region by modulating large-scale circulation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle and eastern routes of the South-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) of China, which are approximately located within the area 28°-42°N and 110°-122°E, are being constructed. This paper investigates the past climatic variations on various time scales using instrumental and proxy data. It is found that annual mean surface air temperature has increased significantly during the past 50-100 years, and winter and spring temperatures in the northern part of the region have undergone the most significant changes. A much more significant increase occurs for annual mean minimum temperature and extreme low temperature than for annual mean maximum temperature and extreme high temperature. No significant trend in annual precipitation is found for the region as a whole for the last 50 and 100 years, although obvious decadal and spatial variation is detectable. A seesaw pattern of annual and summer precipitation variability between the north and the south of the region is evident. Over the last 100 years, the Haihe River basin has witnessed a significant negative trend of annual precipitation, but no similar trend is detected for the Yangtze and Huaihe River basins. Pan evaporation has significantly decreased since the mid-1960s in the region in spite of the fact that the trend appears to have ended in the early 1990s. The negative trend of pan evaporation is very significant in the plain area between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. There was a notable series of dry intervals lasting decades in the north of the region. The northern drought of the past 30 years is not the most severe in view of the past 500 years; however, the southern drought during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s may have been unprecedented. The dryness-wetness index (DWI) shows significant oscillations with periodicities of 9.5 and 20 years in the south and 10.5 and 25 years in the north. Longer periodicities in the DWI series include 160-170- and 70-80-yr oscillations in the north, and 100-150-yr oscillations in the south. The observed climate change could have implications for the construction and management of the SNWDP. The official approval and start of the hydro project was catalyzed by the severe multiyear drought of 1997-2003 in the north, and the operation and management of the project in the future will also be influenced by climate change-in particular by precipitation variability. This paper provides a preliminary discussion of the potential implications of observed climate change for the SNWDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the limitations of coarse-resolution general circulation models (GCMs), delta change (DC) methods are generally used to derive scenarios of future climate as inputs into impact models. In this paper, the impact of future climate change on irrigation was investigated over China using the Community Land Model, version 4 (CLM4), which was calibrated against observed irrigation water demand (IWD) at the provincial level. The results show large differences in projected changes of IWD variability, extremes, timing, and regional responses between the DC and bias-corrected (BC) methods. For example, 95th-percentile IWD increased by 62% in the BC method compared to only a 28% increase in the DC method. In addition, a shift of seasonal IWD peaks (averaged over the country) to one month later in the year was projected when using the BC method, whereas no evident changes were predicted when using the DC method. Furthermore, low-percentile runoff has larger impacts in the BC method compared with proportional changes in the DC method, indicating that hydrological droughts seem to be exacerbated by increased climate variability. The discrepancies between the two methods were potentially due to the inability of the DC method to capture the changes in precipitation variability. Therefore, the authors highlight the potential effects of climate variability and the sensitivity to the choice of particular strategy-adjusting climate projection in assessing climate change impacts on irrigation. Some caveats, however, should be placed around interpretation of simulated percentage changes for all of China since a large model bias was found in southern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the mean seasonal and annual precipitation from 30 meteorological stations in the periods of 1961-2008, the precipitation trends are analyzed by using the Mann-Kendall (MK) test in the Jinsha River basin (JRB). Both the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of precipitation trends in different regions in the JRB are studied for the first time in this paper. There is a slight and insignificant increasing trend in seasonal and annual precipitation except for autumn precipitation, and the annual precipitation has increased by 0.7634 mm yr−1 during the last 48 years. The increasing precipitation trends in spring seem more significant than those in the other three seasons, and autumn is the only season showing a slight and insignificant decreasing precipitation trend. There are more than 80% of stations exhibiting increasing trends for annual precipitation, and it goes to 90% for spring precipitation. The increasing precipitation trends in the headwater and the middle reaches are more dominant than those in the upper and lower reaches. The largest increase magnitude occurred in the less precipitation area, while the largest decrease magnitude occurred in the more precipitation area. The increasing trend of minimum precipitation series and decreasing trend of maximum precipitation series could result in a decreasing trend for the range series in the JRB. In general, the increasing trends of precipitation in the tributary (the Yalong River) are more significant than those in the mainstream (the Jinsha River). The results of this study will provide further knowledge for understanding on the climate change in the JRB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide some new understanding of the mechanical as well as thermal effects of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) on the circulation and climate in Asia through diagnosis and numerical experiments. The air column over the TP descends in winter and ascends in summer and regulates the surface Asian monsoon flow. Sensible heating on the sloping lateral surfaces appears from the authors’ experiments to be the major driving source. The retarding and deflecting effects of the TP in winter generate an asymmetric dipole zonal-deviation circulation, with a large anticyclone gyre to the north and a cyclonic gyre to the south. Such a dipole deviation circulation enhances the cold outbreaks from the north over East Asia, results in a dry climate in south Asia and a moist climate over the Indochina peninsula and south China, and forms the persistent rainfall in early spring (PRES) in south China. In summer the TP heating generates a cyclonic spiral zonal-deviation circulation in the lower troposphere, which converges toward and rises over the TP. It is shown that because the TP is located east of the Eurasian continent, in summertime the meridional winds and vertical motions forced by the Eurasian continental-scale heating and the TP local heating are in phase over the eastern and central parts of the continent. The monsoon in East Asia and the dry climate in middle Asia are therefore intensified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stationarity is an assumption that permeates training and practice in water-resource engineering. However, with global change, the validity of stationarity as well as uncertainty of nonstationarity in water-resource planning are being questioned; thus, it is critical to evaluate the stationarity of climate variables, especially precipitation. Based on the continuous observation data of precipitation from 1427 stations across China, 593 efficient grid cells (1° × 1°) are constructed, and the annual precipitation stationarities from 1959 to 2018 are analyzed. The evaluated autocorrelation stationarity indicates that 92.24%–96.12% of the grid cells for an autocorrelation coefficient of lag 1–8 years of precipitation are indistinguishable from 0 [90% confidence level (CL)]. The mean stationarity indicates that 97.47% of the grid cells have a stable mean for 30 years (90% CL); beyond the confidence limits, they are mainly located in the northwest of China, where annual precipitation is less, and the average exceeding range is ±3.78 mm. The long-term observation of annual precipitation in Beijing (1819–2018) and Shanghai (1879–2018) also yields autocorrelation and mean stationarities. There is no significant difference in the annual precipitations between the past 20 years (1999–2018) and the past 60 years (1959–2018) over China. Therefore, the annual precipitation in China exhibits a weak stationary behavior that is indistinguishable from the stationary stochastic process. The average variation in precipitation is ±9.55% between 30 successive years and 16.53% between 10 successive years. Therefore, it is valuable and feasible to utilize the historical data of annual precipitation as the basis of water-resources application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a microwave-based multisatellite merged product released from the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) and two model-based simulations from the Community Land Model 4.5 (CLM4.5) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) were used to investigate interannual variations and trends of soil moisture in China between 1979 and 2010. They were also evaluated using in situ observations from the nationwide agrometeorological network. These three datasets show consistent drying trends for surface soil moisture in northeastern and central China, as well the eastern portion of Inner Mongolia, and wetting trends in the Tibetan Plateau, which are also identified by in situ observations. Trends in the root-zone soil moisture are in line with those of surface soil moisture seen in the CLM4.5 and GLDAS simulations obtained from most areas in China (78%-88%), except for northwestern China and southwest of the Tibetan Plateau. Moreover, the drying trend intensifies with increasing soil depth. Taking the in situ measurements as reference, it is found that ESA CCI has better accuracy in identifying the significant drying trends while CLM4.5 and GLDAS capture wetting trends better. Compared to temperature, precipitation is the primary factor responsible for these trends, which controls the direction of soil moisture changes, while increasing temperatures can also enhance soil drying during periods of decreased precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the variation and risk changes of extreme precipitation under nonstationarity conditions using the Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale, and Shape (GAMLSS) and the Mann-Kendall (MK) test. The extreme precipitation series is extracted from the observations during the second flood season (July-September) from 1960 to 2012 derived from 86 meteorological stations in the southeastern coastal region of China. The trend of mean (Mn) and variance (Var) of extreme precipitation is detected by MK. Ten large-scale circulation variables and four greenhouse gases are selected to construct a climate change index and a human activity index, which are based on principal component analysis. The recurrence risk of extreme precipitation is calculated by GAMLSS while considering climate changes and human activities. The results demonstrate that the nonstationarity characteristic of extreme precipitation is widespread in this region. A significant increasing trend of Mn is found in Shanghai, eastern Zhejiang, and northern and southern Fujian. An enhanced Var is found in eastern Guangdong. A significant positive correlation exists between climate changes/human activities and Mn/Var, especially in Zhejiang and Fujian. Generally, the contribution of climate changes and human activities to Mn is greater than it is to Var. In this region, the precipitation amount of high-frequency (2-yr return period) and low-frequency (100-yr return period) events increases from inland to coastal and from north to south. The government should pay careful attention to these trends because the intensity of extreme precipitation events and their secondary disasters could result in serious losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several provinces of China experienced an intense drought episode during 2009 and 2010. The drought was particularly severe in southwestern and northern China, where the accumulated precipitation from May 2009 to April 2010 was about 25% less than normal. The decline of accumulated precipitation over northern China was mostly noticeable during the summer season of 2009 and it was comparable to recent dry episodes. The southwestern China drought resulted from a sequence of dry months from summer 2009 to winter 2010, corresponding to the driest event since at least 1951. The suppression of rainfall in summer over both regions was in agreement with a weakened broad-scale South Asian summer monsoon, possibly influenced by an El Niño developing phase, whereas the extremely negative phases of the Arctic Oscillation during the winter of 2010 may have contributed to the persistence of the drought in southwestern China. The assessment of the associated impacts indicates that water reservoirs were severely affected with a ~20% reduction in the nationwide hydroelectrical production during the drought event. Furthermore, an analysis of the normalized difference vegetation index data reveals that large cropland sectors of northern and eastern China experienced up to 8 months of persistently stressed vegetation between May 2009 and July 2010, while southwestern China was relatively less affected. Such different regional vegetative responses are interpreted in terms of the land-cover type, agriculture management, and their dependence on seasonal precipitation and water availability for irrigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]