Rates of temperature change in China during the past 2000 years

Abstract

Using 24 proxy temperature series, the rates of temperature change in China are analyzed at the 30-to 100-year scales for the past 2000 years and at the 10-year scale for the past 500 years. The results show that, at the 100-year scale, the warming rate for the whole of China in the 20th century was only 0.6±1.6°C/100 a (interval at the 95% confidence level, which is used hereafter), while the peak warming rate for the period from the Little Ice Age (LIA) to the 20th century reached 1.1±1.2°C/100 a, which was the greatest in the past 500 years and probably the past 2000 years. At the 30-year scale, warming in the 20th century was quite notable, but the peak rate was still less than rates for previous periods, such as the rapid warming from the LIA to the 20th century and from the 270s-290s to 300s-320s. At the 10-year scale, the warming in the late 20th century was very evident, but it might not be unusual in the context of warming over the past 500 years. The exact timing, duration and magnitude of the warming peaks varied from region to region at all scales. The peak rates of the 100-year scale warming in the AD 180s-350s in northeastern China as well as those in the 260s-410s and 500s-660s in Tibet were all greater than those from the mid-19th to 20th century. Meanwhile, the rates of the most rapid cooling at scales of 30 to 100 years in the LIA were prominent, but they were also not unprecedented in the last 2000 years. At the 10-year scale, for the whole of China, the most rapid decadal cooling in the 20th century was from the 1940s to 1950s with a rate of 0.3±0.6°C/10 a, which was similar to rates for periods before the 20th century. For all regions, the rates of most rapid cooling in the 20th century were all less than those for previous periods. China, past 2000 years, rates of temperature changeCitation:

Sea surface temperature records of core ZY2 from the central mud area in the South Yellow Sea during last 6200 years and related effect of the Yellow Sea Warm Current

“…Chinese historical documents [41,[50][51][52] showed that temperatures in eastern China at that time were the coldest in the past 2000 years. However, the SST decreased gently, with only low amplitude.…”

Wet and cold climate conditions recorded by coral geochemical proxies during the beginning of the first millennium CE in the northern South China Sea

“…In China, the problem of climate change over the past two millennia has been of longstanding interest to the paleoclimatic community (e.g., Gong and Hameed, 1991;Shi et al, 1999;Zheng et al, 2001;Yang et al, 2002;Ge et al, 2003;Ge et al, 2004;Holmes et al, 2009;Ge et al, 2011;Tan et al, 2011;Hao et al, 2012;Ge et al, 2013a;Ge et al, 2013b;Yan et al, 2015a;Yan et al, 2015c;Yan et al, 2015d;Hao et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2016). However, almost all of these studies were based on terrestrial proxy records, historical documentary data, and simulation results.…”

Precipitation variations in Beijing during 1860–1897 AD revealed by daily weather records from the Weng Tong‐He Diary

“…In China, a large number of historical climate reconstructions with information from historical documents have been completed (Ge et al , 2008, 2010; Ge and Zheng, 2010). For instance, Chu (1973) reconstructed temperature changes for the past 5000 years; Zhang (1980) and Wang et al (1998) reconstructed temperatures with a 10‐year resolution for the past 500 years for the mid‐lower region of the Yangtze river and eastern China, respectively; Ge et al (2003) reconstructed temperatures for the past 2000 years with 10–30‐year resolution for eastern China.…”

“…According to previous studies, the Eastern Asia summer monsoon (EASM) area of China underwent a transition from the Little Ice Age to a modern warming climate during the latter half of the 19th century (Ge et al , 2003). In this transition period, the temperature was estimated to increase at a rate of about 0.5 °C per 30 years (Ge et al , 2011b). With such a background of climate warming, the precipitation in northern China associated with the EASM had an increasing trend, and moreover, decadal and annual variations were also found (Zheng et al , 2006); the rainy season in the northwest edge of the EASM area of China was lengthened, and this phenomenon was attributed to the stronger East Asia Monsoon (Ge et al , 2011a).…”