Abstract: Based on the monthly datasets of 137 sounding stations in eastern China and 160 ground-based stations in whole China in the period of 1980-2009, the variation characteristics of the upper-air temperature over eastern China were analyzed. The results show that 1) the cooling rate in the upper troposphere and the mid-lower stratosphere in the past 30 years, was much more intensive than the warming rate in the mid-lower troposphere; 2) the amplitude of seasonal variation of temperature in northeast China was larger than that in southeast China; 3) in the mid-lower troposphere (from surface layer to 500 hPa) of eastern China, temperatures in different regions and different seasons had different responses to global warming, i.e. there was cooling in south of 35°N but warming in north of 35°N in summers, and the warming took place in winters over the whole study area.

Key words: sounding dataset, eastern China, temperature variation