Projected shifts in Köppen climate zones over China and their temporal evolution in CMIP5 multi-model simulations

Abstract

Previous studies have examined the projected climate types in China by 2100. This study identified the emergence time of climate shifts at a 1 • scale over China from 1990 to 2100 and investigated the temporal evolution of Köppen-Geiger climate classifications computed from CMIP5 multi-model outputs. Climate shifts were detected in transition regions (7%-8% of China's land area) by 2010, including rapid replacement of mixed forest (Dwb) by deciduous forest (Dwa) over Northeast China, strong shrinkage of alpine climate type (ET) on the Tibetan Plateau, weak northward expansion of subtropical winterdry climate (Cwa) over Southeast China, and contraction of oceanic climate (Cwb) in Southwest China. Under all future RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) scenarios, the reduction of Dwb in Northeast China and ET on the Tibetan Plateau was projected to accelerate substantially during 2010-30, and half of the total area occupied by ET in 1990 was projected to be redistributed by 2040. Under the most severe scenario (RCP8.5), sub-polar continental winter dry climate over Northeast China would disappear by 2040-50, ET on the Tibetan Plateau would disappear by 2070, and the climate types in 35.9% and 50.8% of China's land area would change by 2050 and 2100, respectively. The results presented in this paper indicate imperative impacts of anthropogenic climate change on China's ecoregions in future decades.

The Köppen‐Trewartha Climate‐Type Changes Over the CORDEX‐East Asia Phase 2 Domain Under 2 and 3 °C Global Warming

“…2). These are in line with results with 18 CMIP5 GCMs (Chan et al, 2016). Areas of changing climate types from F show decreased CDD, except for F-D change in the 2°C GWL (Figure 2b), and increased extreme precipitations (Figures 2c and 2d) and HYINT (Figure 2e), but with high uncertainty (the various ensemble members show disagreement on the sign of precipitation change) especially under the 3°C GWL ( Figures S5c and S5d).…”

Sensitivity of arid/humid patterns in China to future climate change under a high-emissions scenario

“…This is consistent with the conclusions of Wang et al (2016), who posited that the boundaries of the East Asian climate transition zone would shift southeast and northwest, with a higher migration rate for the southern boundary. Research based on the Köppen classification system has shown that the subtropical humid region in Southeast China will contract substantially by the end of the 21st century, relative to the end of 20th century, particularly for the higher-emission scenarios RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (Chan et al, 2016). Other research that used soil moisture to classify AHCRs also showed a significant contraction in the humid region of China, and a southeast expansion of the semi-arid and sub-humid climate zones in Northern China (Li et al, 2013).…”

“…Many previous studies have relied on Köppen climate classification schemes (Crosbie et al, 2012;Chan et al, 2016;Engelbrecht et al, 2016), based primarily on temperature and pre-cipitation. The complex interplay of water supply and demand, including both precipitation (P) and reference evapotranspiration (ET o ), is critical for projecting changes in dryness (Cook et al, 2014;Greve et al, 2015;Mcevoy et al, 2016) and dryland dynamics (Huang et al, 2016b).…”

Patch aggregation trends of the global climate landscape under future global warming scenario

“…Then, we added this monthly means of base period to the historical and RCP8.5 monthly anomalies to generate climatological distribution of temperature and precipitation. This process has been widely used in related research using Köppen-Geiger scheme (Feng et al, 2012;Mahlstein et al, 2013;Chan et al, 2016). Finally, we used the 5-year running mean for all variables to reduce the adverse impact of short-term climate variability.…”