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In recent years, researchers studying historical climates have given an increasing amount of attention to the Yu‐Xue‐Fen‐Cun record of the Qing Dynasty of China. These records play an important role in the quantitative reconstruction of the climate from the past 300 years in China due to their uniform recording formats and measurement methods. As a result of collective effort, methods for climate reconstruction are constantly improving, and regions with reconstructed high‐resolution historical climate data are expanding. This study reviews the features of the Yu‐Xue‐Fen‐Cun record and summarizes the progress and primary results achieved over the past 20 years. Studies showed that temperature variations over eastern China had three stages: a relatively cold phase in the 18th century, the coldest phase in the 19th century, and the warmest phase during and after the 20th century. However, the amplitudes between the maximum and minimum temperatures differed from 4.2 to 5.7 °C among different regions and sites. The variation in annual precipitation in North China showed an opposite phase to the Meiyu rainfall in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the periods of 1736–1767, 1916–1948, and after 1955, and a consistent phase in the periods of 1792–1836 and 1845–1885. The rainband regularly moved away from South China in early May to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in mid‐June, and then finally arrived in North China in early July. This article is categorized under: Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Modern Climate Change [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the reconstructed precipitation series in North China from historical documents, the 1876--1878 drought was identified as the most severe and extreme one in North China over the past 300 years. Meanwhile, the spatial patterns of seasonal and annual precipitation during 1876--1877 were analyzed and the social and economic impacts related with this drought event were evaluated according to the descriptions in the historical documents. The results indicated that this long-lasting drought started by the spring of 1876 and did not stop until the spring of 1878. Within the three years, the harvest failures brought the rice price increased to 5--10 times than that in the normal year, and the total population in the five provinces over North China decreased by more than 20 million due to a large number of dead people and migrations. In addition, related investigations suggested that the 1876--1878 drought was prevalent worldwide, which has possible link with abnormal high SST in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific, strong El Niño episode and positive AAO anomalies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an analysis of the change of plant phenophase in spring and the impact of climate warming on the plant phenophase in China for the last 40 years, based on plant phenology data from 26 stations of the Chinese Phenology Observation Network of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the climate data. Reconstruction of the geographical distribution models of phenophase in every decade; Study of the impact of climate warming on geographical distribution model of phenophase;. Description of the results. which show that (i) the response of phenophase advance or delay to temperature change is nonlinear.

We reconstructed a 500-year long winter (November to February) temperature series with a yearly resolution in southern China. The series is based on six types of proxies extracted from historical documents, including the southern limits of frost disaster, freezing disaster and snow, along with snowfall days and the first/last frost disaster dates. In the reconstruction, linear regression models are established among each proxy and regional winter temperature. Variance matching, minimum selection, and envelope analysis methods are performed to eliminate non-homogeneous effects because of different proxy types, missing data, and the changing amount of records. Compared with the average temperatures during 1851–1950, the reconstruction shows that southern China experienced a cold period in the first 40 years of the sixteenth century with an average of −0.40 °C with frequent extremes. An upturning occurred during the 1540s to mid-1560s, followed by a stable phase until the 1620s. Then the temperature started to fall from the 1630s and reached its lowest in 1660, where it dropped to −2.01 °C. Moreover, the mean value was −0.49 °C between the years 1648–1697, which was the coldest 50 years over the last five centuries. The temperatures during the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century was characterized by annual to decadal fluctuations, with two moderately warm intervals in the 1770s and 1840s–1850s, as well as three moderately cold intervals in 1790s, 1830s, and 1870s to the mid-1890s. Over the recent century, the warming rate since 1901 was 0.56 °C/100a, whereas the temperature reached 0.32 °C/10a after 1979. The hottest five years during the last five centuries all occurred after 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Most estimates of Chinese regional Surface Air Temperatures since the late-19th century have identified two relatively warm periods – 1920s–40s and 1990s–present. However, there is considerable debate over how the two periods compare to each other. Some argue the current warm period is much warmer than the earlier warm period. Others argue the earlier warm period was comparable to the present. In this collaborative paper, including authors from both camps, the reasons for this ongoing debate are discussed. Several different estimates of Chinese temperature trends, both new and previously published, are considered. A study of the effects of urbanization bias on Chinese temperature trends was carried out using the new updated version of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) – version 4 (currently in beta production). It is shown that there are relatively few rural stations with long records, but urbanization bias artificially makes the early warm period seem colder and the recent warm period seem warmer. However, current homogenization approaches (which attempt to reduce non-climatic biases) also tend to have similar effects, making it unclear whether reducing or increasing the relative warmth of each period is most appropriate. A sample of 17 Chinese temperature proxy series (12 regional and 5 national) is compared and contrasted specifically for the period since the 19th century. Most proxy series imply a warm early-20th century period and a warm recent period, but the relative warmth of these two periods differs between proxies. Also, with some proxies, one or other of the warm periods is absent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]