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Extreme precipitation has been reported to occur more frequently, and intensified extreme precipitation can cause considerable socioeconomic losses. Extreme precipitation can be measured by the concentration index (CI) and the precipitation concentration index (PCI). The former indicates the degree to which daily precipitation is unevenly distributed in the time domain, and the latter represents the degree to which monthly precipitation is unevenly distributed throughout the year. In this paper, we analyzed spatiotemporal characteristics of extreme precipitation by using CI and PCI and examined whether links exist between extreme precipitation and urban extent. We found that the spatial patterns of PCI and CI are different over China. The two are consistent in being high in Northeast China and low in Southwest China. However, they differ significantly; Northwest China is where CI is low but PCI is high, which indicates that precipitation is highly concentrated in a few months of the year, but daily precipitation is more evenly distributed during the wet season in Northwest China. The trends of both PCI and annual CI are spatially heterogeneous and are significant at the 90 % confidence level for approximately 20 % of China, and seasonal CI exhibits very different trends. Possible links between precipitation concentration and urbanization are investigated by analyzing the correlation coefficient between CI (PCI) and population density. Precipitation concentration is found positively correlated with urbanization at the 99 % confidence level in the three selected regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected from 22 urban and 65 rural meteorological stations in northwestern China between 1961 and 2009, this paper presents a study concerning the effects of urbanization on air temperature trends. To distinguish among the potential influences that stem from the economic development levels, population scales, and geographic environments of the cities in this region, the 49-year study period was divided into two periods: a period of less economic development, from 1961 to 1978, and a period of greater economic development, from 1979 to 2009. Each of the cities was classified as a megalopolis, large, or medium-small, depending on the population, and each was classified as a plateau, plain, or oasis city, depending on the surrounding geography. The differences in the air temperature trends between cities and the average of their rural counterparts were used to examine the warming effects of urbanization. The results of this study indicate that the magnitude of warming effects due to urbanization depends not only on a city's economic level, but also on the population scale and geographic environment of the city. The urbanization of most cities in northwestern China resulted in considerable negative warming effects during 1961-1978 but evidently positive effects during 1979-2009. The population scale of a city represents a significant factor: a city with a larger population has a stronger warming influence, regardless of whether the effect is negative or positive. Among the three geographic environments of the cities considered, plateaus and plains more significantly enhance warming effects than oases. The urban population trend has a very significant logarithm relationship with the urban temperature effect, but no clear relationships between urban temperature effects and city elevation were detected. The majority of the temperature trends, accounting for more than 60 % of the trends during 1961-2009, can be explained by natural factors, although urbanization has had some obvious effects on temperatures in northwestern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on homogenized land surface air temperature (SAT) data (derived from China Homogenized Historical Temperature (CHHT) 1.0), the warming trends over Northeast China are detected in this paper, and the impacts of urban heat islands (UHIs) evaluated. Results show that this region is undergoing rapid warming: the trends of annual mean minimum temperature (MMIT), mean temperature (MT), and mean maximum temperature (MMAT) are 0.40 C decade−1, 0.32 C decade−1, and 0.23 C decade−1, respectively. Regional average temperature series built with these networks including and excluding “typical urban stations” are compared for the periods of 1954–2005. Although impacts of UHIs on the absolute annual and seasonal temperature are identified, UHI contributions to the long-term trends are less than 10% of the regional total warming during the period. The large warming trend during the period is due to a regime shift in around 1988, which accounted for about 51% of the regional warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to rapid economic development, China has experienced one of the greatest rates of change in land use/land cover during the last two decades. This change is mainly urban expansion and cultivated land reduction in urban growth regions, both of which play an important role in regional climate change. In this paper, the variation of the urban heat island (UHI) caused by urbanization has been evaluated with an analysis of land use change in China. First, meteorological observation stations were grouped by different land cover types (dry land, paddy field, forest, grassland, water field, urban, rural inhabitable area, industrial and mineral land, and waste land) throughout China. These stations were subdivided into urban and non-urban classes. Then, a new method was proposed to determine the UHI intensity from the difference between the observed and the interpolated air temperature of urban type weather stations. The results indicate that the trends of UHI intensity in different land use change regions are spatially correlated with regional land use and its change pattern. During 1991–2000, the estimated UHI intensity has increased by 0.11 °C per decade in the spring and has fluctuated in other seasons throughout China resulting from land use change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precipitation pattern in the Taihu Lake basin in East China has significantly changed over the last decades, perhaps due to intensive urbanization. However, there is limited understanding of the effect of large-scale expansion of city groups on the precipitation variability, which causes a challenge for flood control in the basin. Considering the process of urbanization, we investigated in this study the variability of precipitation in different urban zones and characteristic scales and explored the influence of urban development on the rain island effect in the basin. The basin was divided into three zones (old urban area, new urban area, and suburbs) considering different degrees of urbanization. Results indicated that precipitation change and its response to urbanization had spatial differences at various characteristic scales. Urbanization exhibited a significant "precipitation enhancement effect" at the characteristic scales including annual, flood season, summer, autumn, and winter but indicated a "precipitation reduction effect" in spring. Annual (flood season) precipitation in 1990–2013 increased by 30.04 mm (16.94 mm), due to urbanization, compared with that in the preceding period. The rate of contribution of urbanization to precipitation increase was 15.6%, 41.1%, and 14.4% in summer, autumn, and winter. The enhancement effect of short duration rainfall extremes in old urban area was also discernible, and that in new urban areas would enhance along with urban expansion, complicating urban flood and waterlogging control. More effective adaptation strategies should be implemented to handle the unfavorable situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a 30-year data (1983–2012) from 428 stations, we study summer precipitation differences between urban and rural areas in 5 Chinese climate regions: the Pearl River Delta (PRD), the Middle and Upper reaches of the Yangtze River (MUYR), the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), the North China Plain (NCP), and Northeast China (NEC). By analyzing heavy rain (HR) (24-h precipitation ≥ 100 mm) and light rain (LR) (0.1 mm ≤ 24 h precipitation ≤ 25 mm), we find that urbanization has had inconsistent effects on precipitation. Higher HR occurs over urban areas of the PRD and YRD than rural areas, and lower HR occurs over urban areas of the MUYR, NCP and NEC than rural areas. The urban LR is less than the rural LR in all climate regions. The correlation between precipitation and the convective available potential energy (CAPE) or humidity explains the regional differences in urbanization effects on HR. HR is greatly affected by the CAPE in the PRD and YRD, where the CAPE is high (> 600 J/kg at 14:00 LT), water vapor is abundant (> 45 kg/m2 at 14:00 LT), and the urban heat island increases the urban HR. However, HR is greatly affected by humidity in the MUYR, NCP, and NEC, where the CAPE and water vapor are less (≤ 500 J/kg and ≤ 40 kg/m2 at 14:00 LT) and the urban HR is mainly suppressed by the urban dry island. Our results indicate that urbanization promotes HR in wet climates but suppresses HR in dry climates during summer in central and eastern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Updating the urban land cover information has been proved a necessary method for the numerical studies of urban climate and urban atmospheric environment in China, a fast urbanizing country. However, there are uncertainties in the urban land use/cover (ULUC) information in different datasets due to the uncertainties in raw data sources and produce methods. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting model is used to simulate the summer climate over the Yangtze River Delta in July and August 2013, when a heatwave episode occurred. Five numerical experiments are designed; one is the baseline experiment (non-urban land cover (NOURB)) in which all urban land covers are removed, and different urban land use/cover (ULUC) experiments from four different global land cover datasets are used in other four experiments. The differences between the ULUC experiments and the NOURB experiment are used to observe the urbanization effects. The results show a remarkable urbanization effect in all the ULUC experiments, and the urbanization influences are most different over the union-urban area, which defined as the area marked as urban area by at least one land cover dataset, because the uncertainties in urban land cover information are greatest in this area. All the ULUC experiments show the regional influence of urbanization as well, which means urbanization effects are not limited in cities. The Climate Change Initiative (CCI) experiment using the European Space Agency CCI 2013 dataset showed the greatest urbanization influence and the highest effect index in all analyzed variables, because of the largest urban land cover area in the analysis domain. The urban land cover area in the Global Land Cover experiment is the smallest among the ULUC experiments, but it distributes in a more concentrated way than in other experiments; it indicates that both city size and city shape affect the regional influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical temperature records are often partially biased by the urban heat island (UHI) effect. However, the exact magnitude of these biases is an ongoing, controversial scientific question, especially in regions like China where urbanization has greatly increased in recent decades. Previous studies have mainly used statistical information and selected static population targets, or urban areas in a particular year, to classify urban-rural stations and estimate the influence of urbanization on observed warming trends. However, there is a lack of consideration for the dynamic processes of urbanization. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD), and Pearl River Delta (PRD) are three major urban agglomerations in China which were selected to investigate the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban expansion effects on observed warming trends in this study. Based on remote sensing (RS) data, urban area expansion processes were taken into consideration and the relationship between urban expansion rates and warming trends was investigated using data from 975 meteorological stations throughout China. Although urban areas constitute less than 1% of land in China, more than 90% of the meteorological stations experienced urban land use change and the average urban expansion rate was 0.33%/a. There was also a significant positive relationship between observed warming trends and urban expansion rates. Background warming, without the influence of urbanization and extra warming induced by urbanization processes, was estimated using a linear regression model based on observed warming trends and urban expansion rates. On average, urbanization led to an additional annual warming of 0.034 ± 0.005 °C/10a. This urbanization warming effect was 0.050 ± 0.007 °C/10a for minimum temperatures and 0.008 ± 0.004 °C/10a for maximum temperatures. Moreover, it appeared that urbanization induced greater warming on the minimum temperature during the cold season and maximum temperature during the warm season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By characterizing the patterns of temperature extremes over nine integrated agricultural regions (IARs) in China from 1961 to 2011, this study performed trend analyses on 16 extreme temperature indices using a high-resolution (0.5° × 0.5°) daily gridded dataset and the Mann-Kendall method. The results show that annually, at both daytime and nighttime, cold extremes significantly decreased but warm extremes significantly increased across all IARs. Overall, nighttimes tended to warm faster than daytimes. Diurnal temperature ranges (DTR) diminished, apart from the mid-northern Southwest China Region and the mid-Loess Plateau Region. Seasonally, DTR widely diminished across all IARs during the four seasons except for spring. Higher minimum daily minimum temperature (TNn) and maximum daily maximum temperature (TXx), in both summer and winter, were recorded for most IARs except for the Huang-Huai-Hai Region; in autumn, all IARs generally encountered higher TNn and TXx. In all seasons, warming was observed at daytime and nighttime but, again, nighttimes warmed faster than daytimes. The results also indicate a more rapid warming trend in Northern and Western China than in Southern and Eastern China, with accelerated warming at high elevations. The increases in TNn and TXx might cause a reduction in agriculture yield in spring over Northern China, while such negative impact might occur in Southern China during summer. In autumn and winter, however, the negative impact possibly occurred in most of the IARs. Moreover, increased TXx in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta is possibly related to rapid local urbanization. Climatically, the general increase in temperature extremes across Chinese IARs may be induced by strengthened Northern Hemisphere Subtropical High or weakened Northern Hemisphere Polar Vortex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large areas of cropland and natural vegetation have been replaced by impervious surfaces during the recent rapid urbanization in China, which has resulted in intensified urban heat island effects and modified local or regional warming trends. However, it is unclear how urban expansion contributes to local temperature change. In this study, we investigated the relationship between land surface temperature (LST) change and the increase of urban land signals. The megacity of Tianjin was chosen for the case study because it is representative of the urbanization process in northern China. A combined analysis of LST and urban land information was conducted based on an urban-rural transect derived from Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS), and QuickBird images. The results indicated that the density of urban land signals has intensified within a 1-km grid in the urban center with an impervious land fraction >60 %. However, the construction on urban land is quite different with low-/mid-rise buildings outnumbering high-rise buildings in the urban-rural transect. Based on a statistical moving window analysis, positive correlation ( R > 0.9) is found between LST and urban land signals. Surface temperature change (ΔLST) increases by 0.062 °C, which was probably caused by the 1 % increase of urbanized land (ΔIF) in this case region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than half of the world's population is living in towns and cities according to the United Nations Population Fund (). The rapid urbanization, especially in China, has significantly influenced the climate at least at a local scale. The increasing extreme temperature (ET) occurrence in urban areas prompts us to examine the historical and current situation of ET occurrence in cities by comparing them with that in mountains which provide a relatively natural record of the earth's climate because they are far away from cities and it is not influenced by urbanization effects. The ET occurrence was determined by multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA), a well-accepted method aiming at finding the ET thresholds according to the characteristics of the data themselves. Warming trends in the city and mountain sites and the frequencies, intensities, and severities of ET occurrence were compared using climatic data between 1959 and 2011. The results show that the warming amplitude of the cities is not higher than that of the mountain regions, even with urbanization effect. The extremely low temperatures (ELT) in the cities occurred significantly lower in frequency and severity compared with that in the mountain sites. However, the intensity of ELT is generally higher than that in the mountains. Only the cities at low latitudes in China have experienced more frequent and severe extremely high temperature (EHT) occurrence than the mountain sites in recent decades. But the intensity was not as high as that in the mountain sites. We conclude that the current situation of ET occurrence in the cities is not very serious if we consider the ET occurrence of the mountains as the 'new norm.' However, it is highly possible that the frequency of ET, especially the EHT, in the cities would increase and will be even more than that of the mountains. Moreover, the changes of ET occurrences before and after 1980 are distinguishable, which could be attributed to urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total hours of sunshine are one of the most important factors affecting climate and environment, and its long-term variation is of much concern in climate studies. Trends of temporal and spatial patterns in sunshine hours and related climatic factors over southwestern China are evaluated for the period 1961-2009 based on data from 111 standard meteorological stations. The results showed that southwestern China is experiencing a statistical decrease of sunshine hours, at the rate of 31.9 h/10a during 1961-2009. The decline was particularly strong in summer, whereas it is nonsignificant in winter. Spatially, statistically significant decreases of sunshine hours mainly occurred in lower altitude regions, especially in the Sichuan basin and Guizhou plateau. Sunshine hours have a high correlation with wind speed, relative humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, surface downwards solar radiation flux, and cloud water content, with wind speed showing the strongest relationship to sunshine hours, implicit in the close correlation (temporally and spatially) between the two variables. Changing water vapor and cloud cover influence sunshine hours in southwestern China. In addition, the increased surface downwards solar radiation flux also made some contribution to a rise of sunshine hours during 1991-2009. The larger decreasing trends of sunshine hours at urban stations than rural stations may reflect the effect of urbanization on sunshine hours. Variations are dominated by the comprehensive functions of multiple factors owing to the complex nature of effects on sunshine hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we systematically analyze the changing properties of reference evapotranspiration (ETref) across China using Penman-Monteith (P-M) method, exploring the major sensitive meteorological variables for ETref, and investigating influences of human activities, mainly urbanization in this study, on ETref changes in both space and time. We obtain some important conclusions: (1) decreasing annual and seasonal ETref is observed in the east, south and northwest China. However, a long strip lying between these regions is identified to be characterized by increasing ETref; (2) in the regions east to 100°E, the net total solar radiation is the main cause behind the decreasing ETref. In northwest China, however, relative humidity is recognized as the most sensitive variable for the ETref; (3) in the east and south China, urbanization greatly influences the ETref by directly decreasing net solar radiation. The increased air pollution and aerosols in the highly urbanized regions are the main driving factors causing decreasing net radiation; and (4) this study reveals accelerating hydrological cycle from south to north China. Besides, increasing ETref in the source regions of large rivers in China may pose new challenges for the basin-scale water resource management. The results of this study highlight the integrated effects of climate changes and human activities on ETref changes in different regions of China, which will be of great scientific and practical merits in in-depth understanding of hydrological cycle alterations under the changing environment in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that urbanization in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in southern China can have significant effect on the land-sea breeze circulation in the region. In this study, some characteristics of this urban heat island (UHI) effect are further investigated by some idealized numerical experiments. This study focuses on three aspects of the UHI effects. Firstly, the interaction of UHI effects associated with different city clusters in the PRD region. Secondly, the UHI effect and the strength of the background wind field. Thirdly, seasonal variation of the UHI effect. Experiment results suggest that the interaction of the UHI effects due to the closely distributed city clusters in the PRD region is not significant, while the UHI effect in the region may depend on the strength of the background wind. The seasonal-mean UHI effect in the region shows a significant variation associated with the change of seasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yangtze River Delta Economic Belt is one of the most active and developed areas in China and has experienced quick urbanization with fast economic development. The weather research and forecasting model (WRF), with a single-layer urban canopy parameterization scheme, is used to simulate the influence of urbanization on climate at local and regional scales in this area. The months January and July, over a 5-year period (2003-2007), were selected to represent the winter and summer climate. Two simulation scenarios were designed to investigate the impacts of urbanization: (1) no urban areas and (2) urban land cover determined by MODIS satellite observations in 2005. Simulated near-surface temperature, wind speed and specific humidity agree well with the corresponding measurements. By comparing the simulations of the two scenarios, differences in near-surface temperature, wind speed and precipitation were quantified. The conversion of rural land (mostly irrigation cropland) to urban land cover results in significant changes to near-surface temperature, humidity, wind speed and precipitation. The mean near-surface temperature in urbanized areas increases on average by 0.45 ± 0.43°C in winter and 1.9 ± 0.55°C in summer; the diurnal temperature range in urbanized areas decreases on average by 0.13 ± 0.73°C in winter and 0.55 ± 0.84°C in summer. Precipitation increases about 15% over urban or leeward areas in summer and changes slightly in winter. The urbanization impact in summer is stronger and covers a larger area than that in winter due to the regional east-Asian monsoon climate characterized by warm, wet summers and cool, dry winters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]