Extreme Climate in China: Facts, Simulation and Projection

Wang, Huijun; Sun, Jun; Chen, Huopo; Zhu, Yali; Zhang, Ying; Jiang, Dabang; Lang, Xianmei; Fan, Ke; Yu, Enyan; Yang, Song

doi:10.1127/0941-2948/2012/0330

Cited by 219 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…These changes exhibit significant agreement with the simulations by regional climate models (RCM), but with more local small-scale information provided in the high-resolution RCMs [17][18][19][20][21]. These results have been well reviewed by Ding et al [22] and Wang et al [23].…”

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confidence: 75%

Projected change in extreme rainfall events in China by the end of the 21st century using CMIP5 models

Chen

2013

Chin. Sci. Bull.

131

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Projection of future climate changes and their regional impact is critical for long-term planning at the national and regional levels aimed at adaptation and mitigation. This study assesses the future changes in precipitation in China and the associated atmospheric circulation patterns using the Couple Model Intercomparison Project 5 Phase (CMIP5) simulations under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The results consistently indicate that the annual precipitation in China is projected to significantly increase at the end of the 21st century compared to the present-day levels. The number of days and the intensity of medium rain, large rain and heavy rain are obviously increased, while the number of trace rain days is projected to decrease over the entire area of China. Further analysis indicates that the significant increase of annual precipitation in Northwest China is primarily due to the increase of light rain and the increases in North and Northeast China are primarily due to the increase of medium rain. In the region of southern China, the increases of large rain and heavy rain play an important role in the increase of annual precipitation, while light rain events play a negative role. Analysis of the changes in atmospheric circulation indicates that the East Asian summer monsoon circulation is projected to be considerably stronger, and the local atmospheric stratification is projected to be more unstable, all of which provide a background benefit for the increase of precipitation and extreme rainfall events in China under global warming scenarios. CMIP5, precipitation, extreme rainfall, atmospheric circulation, projection Citation:Chen H P. Projected change in extreme rainfall events in China by the end of the 21st century using CMIP5 models. Chin Sci Bull, 2013, 58: 14621472, doi: 10.1007/s11434-012-5612-2The significant warming that has been observed globally over the past century has a high probability of being due to the increase in anthropogenic factors concentrating greenhouse gases. This significant warming has produced a significant impact on human society, ecosystems, and the environment, and this warming is capable of causing thousands of deaths and heavy economic losses. By the end of the 21st century, as reported in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4), human society will become much more vulnerable as the consequences of continuous global warming, with global temperature increasing by 1.1-6.4°C relative to 1980-1999 [1]. Due to these future negative impacts, governments and the public alike have begun to pay increased attention to climate change under the global warming scenario.Modern global climate models that are capable of realistically simulating many aspects of the climate are the primary tools for determining the attribution of recent warming and for developing projections of future climate change. Researchers in China have taken a great deal of effort to study future climate change based on such model simulations, and some valuable and c...

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supporting

confidence: 75%

Projected change in extreme rainfall events in China by the end of the 21st century using CMIP5 models

Chen

2013

Chin. Sci. Bull.

131

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“…A basic logic test and spatial consistency test are carried out for data quality control (Li et al 2004). These data are reliable and have been used extensively to identify climate change and validate climate models (Guo and Wang 2012;Wang et al 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Evaluation of CORDEX regional climate models in simulating temperature and precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau

Guo

Sun

2018

Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters

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Using a regional climate model (RCM) is generally regarded as a promising approach in researching the climate of the Tibetan Plateau, due to the advantages provided by the high resolutions of these models. Whilst previous studies have focused mostly on individual RCM simulations, here, multiple RCMs from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment are evaluated in simulating surface air temperature and precipitation changes over the Tibetan Plateau using station and gridded observations. The results show the following: (1) All RCMs consistently show similar spatial patterns, but a mean cold (wet) bias in the temperature (precipitation) climatology compared to station observations. The RCMs fail to reproduce the observed spatial patterns of temperature and precipitation trends, and on average produce greater trends in temperature and smaller trends in precipitation than observed results. The multi-model ensemble overall produces superior trends in both simulated temperature and precipitation relative to individual models. Meanwhile, RegCM4 presents the most reasonable simulated trends among the five RCMs. (2) Considerable dissimilarities are shown in the simulated quantitative results from the different RCMs, which indicates a large model dependency in the simulation of climate over the Tibetan Plateau. This implies that caution may be needed when an individual RCM is used to estimate the amplitude of climate change over the Tibetan Plateau. (3) The temperature (precipitation) in 2016-35, relative to 1986-2005, is projected by the multi-model ensemble to increase by 1.38 ± 0.09 °C (0.8% ± 4.0%) and 1.77 ± 0.28 °C (7.3% ± 2.5%) under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenario, respectively. The results of this study advance our understanding of the applicability of RCMs in studies of climate change over the Tibetan Plateau from a multiple-RCM perspective.

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“…Most of these valuable contributions to the literature were well reviewed in China's National Assessment Report on Climate Change, as well as in a number of other review papers [7][8][9]. However, there have only been a few works that have directly studied the sensitivity of precipitation to temperature.…”

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Changes in precipitation and extreme precipitation in a warming environment in China

Sun

2012

Chin. Sci. Bull.

111

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This study analyses the decadal changes in winter precipitation and extreme precipitation in a warming environment in China. The results show that, together with a trend of winter warming in China, winter precipitation and extreme precipitation in the region are also increasing. In addition, concurrent with the decadal warming shift that occurred in the mid-1980s, precipitation and extreme precipitation both increased significantly. Quantitative analysis shows that precipitation and extreme precipitation increased at rates of 9.7% and 22.6% per 1°C of surface warming in China. This rate of precipitation increase is greater than the global mean, which indicates that precipitation in China is highly sensitive to climate warming and further highlights the importance of studying regional responses to climate warming. The fact that extreme precipitation is increasing at a higher rate than precipitation implies that winter precipitation in China will increasingly be of more extreme type in the context of global warming, which could partly explain why there have recently been a number of record-breaking extreme snowfall events in China.winter precipitation, extreme precipitation, global warming, sensitivity, regional response, climate change Citation:Sun

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Extreme Climate in China: Facts, Simulation and Projection

Cited by 219 publications

References 6 publications

Projected change in extreme rainfall events in China by the end of the 21st century using CMIP5 models

Projected change in extreme rainfall events in China by the end of the 21st century using CMIP5 models

Evaluation of CORDEX regional climate models in simulating temperature and precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau

Changes in precipitation and extreme precipitation in a warming environment in China

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