Changes of extreme cold events in China over the last century based on reanalysis data

doi:10.12006/j.issn.1673-1719.2022.237

Abstract

Abstract:

Significant changes of extreme cold events in China have occurred in the background of global warming. There are few studies focusing on the characteristics of extreme cold event change in the last century due to the limitation of observation data. By comparing the ETCCDI (Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices) and the newly extended ET-SCI (Expert Team on Sector-specific Climate Indices) calculated from observations and two century-scale reanalysis datasets (NOAA-20CRv2 and ERA-20C), we analyzed the characteristics of the changes of extreme cold events in China. Consisting with global warming, the intensity, frequency, and duration of extreme cold events in China showed a decreasing trend since the early 20th century. Meanwhile, the number and duration of cold wave defined based on the ECF (Excess Cold Factor) presented the trend of reduction, and the decrease in Heating Degree Day (HDD) reflected the decreasing trend of heating energy demand in China. Trends of the characteristics of extreme cold event were more pronounced after 1951 in China, with trends of some indices significantly exceeding the century trends. The above showed that cold events had decreased rapidly since the mid-20th century. It’s worth noting that the two sets of centennial scale reanalysis data can be used to study the changes of regional extreme cold events in China, but the uncertainties are large in areas with insufficient spatio-temporal coverage of site observations, and the deficiencies caused by spatial coverage and quality issues need to be carefully considered.

Key words: Century climate change, Extreme cold events, Climate extremes indices

WANG Bing-Jie, SUN Ying, HU Ting, DONG Si-Yan. Changes of extreme cold events in China over the last century based on reanalysis data[J]. Climate Change Research, 2023, 19(4): 403-417.

Figures/Tables 8

Fig. 1 Locations of 2419 stations over China

Table 1 The main information of NOAA-20CRv2c and ERA-20C

Table 2 Indices of extreme cold event

Fig. 2 Spatial trend patterns of anomalies of extreme indices relative to the 1961-1990 average in China during 1961-2010 based on observation (1), NOAA-20CRv2c (2). (Dotting denotes pass of the t-test at the 95% confidence level. The number in the upper center area above panels indicates the trend in China, and * denotes pass of the t-test at the 95% confidence level)

Fig. 3 Time series of pattern correlations of annual fields between the reanalysis datasets and observation data during 1961-2010

Fig. 4 The standardized Taylor diagram of extreme indices based on the observation and reanalysis datasets during 1961-2010. (A denotes all in China, W denotes western China, E denotes eastern China)

Fig. 5 Time series of area-averaged annual extreme indices in China relative to 1961-1990

Fig. 6 Linear trends of extreme indices in China during 1901-2010. ( “×” denotes no-pass of the t-test at the 95% confidence level)

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