关键词: 冷冬, 寒潮, 降水量, 积雪, 极端气候事件, cold winter, cold wave, precipitation, snow cover, climate extremes

Abstract: Anomalous characters of 2009/2010 winter (from 1st November to next 31st March) climate in northern Xinjiang were quantitatively analyzed based on the observations of 43 meteorological stations in 1961-2010 in terms of extreme precipitation and temperature events defined by WMO. The results show that in the 2009/2010 winter, precipitation in northern Xinjiang was heavy, snow cover was thick with a long duration, changes in temperature were very large, and several meteorological variables describing precipitation and snow cover broke their historical extremes; extreme events was characteristic of high frequency, wide spatial range, and the coexistence of extreme cold and warm events. Under the large scale background of climate warming, the occurrence of such extreme climate events that brought about heavy snow, thick snow cover, and severe disasters in the 2009/2010 winter has been seldom seen in northern Xinjiang, which indicates the diversity and complicity of extreme climate events.