Abstract
Long-term trend and abrupt changes of major climate variables in the Taihu Basin were investigated based on the mean, maximum and minimum air temperature, diurnal temperature range (DTR), precipitation, relative humidity and sunshine duration at six meteorological stations from 1954 to 2006. Results showed that the long-term trend for annual precipitation was not statistically significant during the past 53 years, but a wetter tendency was detected and the increasing centre for annual precipitation was located in the southeast of the study area. Mean air temperature has increased by 1.43°C, similar trends were also identified for maximum and minimum air temperature, which have increased by 1.06 and 1.54°C, respectively, while DTR exhibited a slight decreasing trend with a rate of about −0.09°C/(10 year). The annual mean relative humidity and sunshine duration exhibited a decreasing trend, with Kendall slope values of −0.99%/10 year and −7.797 h/10 year, respectively. Examination of long-range dependence showed that all climate variables exhibited strong persistence at annual scale except minimum air temperature. Detection of abrupt changes using nonparametric Mann–Kendall and Pettitt methods showed different results. Abrupt changes occurred in the 1980s and 2000s for annual precipitation using the nonparametric Mann–Kendall method, while no abrupt changes were detected using the Pettitt method. Abrupt changes of temperature and relative humidity took place in the early 1990s using the nonparametric Mann–Kendall method, which occurred in the late and mid 1980s using the Pettitt method, while abrupt changes of sunshine duration and DTR detected by two methods occurred in the similar period. The result will be helpful for local flood control and drought relief in urban planning and construction under future global climate change.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abarghouei HB, Asadi Zarch MA, Dastorani MT, Kousari MR, Safari Zarch M (2011) The survey of climatic drought trend in Iran. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 25(8):851–863
Bellin A, Pannone M, Fiori A, Rinaldo A (1996) On transport in porous formations characterized by heterogeneity of evolving scales. Water Resour Res 32(12):3485–3496
Demaree GR, Nicolis C (1990) Onset of Sahelian drought viewed as fluctuation-induced transition. Q J R Meteorol Soc 116:221–238
Ding B, Gu XY, Miao QL (2005) Characteristics in the variation of temperature over the Yangtze River valley over last 50 years. Resour Environ Yangtze Basin 15(4):531–536 (in Chinese)
Ding YH, Ren GY, Shi GY, Gong P, Zheng XH, Zhai PM, Zhang DE, Zhao ZC, Wang SW, Wang HJ, Luo Y, Chen DL, Gao XJ, Dai XS (2006) National Assessment Report of Climate Change (I): Climate change in China and its future trend. Adv Clim Change Res 2(1):3–8 (in Chinese)
Du J, He F, Zhang Z, Shi PJ (2011) Precipitation change and human impacts on hydrologic variables in Zhengshui River Basin, China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess. doi:10.1007/s00477-010-0453-5
Fu GB, Wang Q (1992) The definition and detection of the abrupt climatic change. Scientia Atmospherica Sinica 16(4):482–493 (in Chinese)
Gan TY (1998) Hydroclimatic trends and possible climatic warming in the Canadian Prairies. Water Resour Res 34(11):3009–3015
Goossens C, Berger A (1987) How to recognize an abrupt climatic change? In: Berger WH, Labeyrie LD (eds) Abrupt climatic change, evidence and implications. NATO ASI series C: mathematical and physical sciences no. 216. D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, pp 31–46
Hamed KH (2008) Trend detection in hydrologic data: the Mann–Kendall test under the scaling hypothesis. J Hydrol 349(3–4):350–363
Houghton JT, Ding Y, Griggs DJ et al (2001) Climate change 2001: The scientific basis. Contribution of working group I to the third assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, London
Hurst HE (1951) Long-term storage capacity of reservoirs. Trans Am Soc Civ Eng 116:770–799
Jiang T, Su BD, Wang YJ, Zhang Q, Qin NX, Shi YF (2005) Trends of temperature, precipitation and runoff in the Yangtze River basin from 1961 to 2000. Adv Clim Change Res 1(2):65–68 (in Chinese)
Kendall MG (1975) Rank correlation methods. Griffin, London
Koutsoyiannis D (2002) The Hurst phenomenon and fractional Gaussian noise made easy. Hydrol Sci J 47(4):573–595
Koutsoyiannis D (2003) Climate change, the Hurst phenomenon, and hydrological statistics. Hydrol Sci J 48(1):3–24
Makowski K, Wild M, Ohmura A (2008) Diurnal temperature range over Europe between 1950 and 2005. Atmos Chem Phys 8:6483–6498
Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259
Moraes JM, Pellegrino HQ, Ballester MV, Martinelli LA, Victoria R, Krusche AV (1998) Trends in hydrological parameters of a southern Brazilian watershed and its relation to human induced changes. Water Resour Manag 12:295–311
NDRC (2007) China’s national climate change programme. National Development and Reform Commission, People’s Republic of China
Pettitt AN (1979) A non-parametric approach to the change-point problem. Appl Stat 28(2):126–135
Rose O (1996) Estimation of the Hurst parameter of long-range dependent time series. Research report series (report no. 137). Institute of Computer Science, University of Wurzburg, Germany
Shi YF (1996) Chinese historical climatic changes. Shandong Science & Technology Press, Jinan (in Chinese)
Sneyers R (1975) Sur l’analyse statistique des séries d’observations. Technical note 143. WMO, Geneva
Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, London
Vose RS, Easterling DR, Gleason B (2005) Maximum, minimum temperature trends for the globe: an update through 2004. Geophys Res Lett 32:L23822. doi:10.1029/2005GL024379
Wang TS (2006) Flood control and water resources management in the Taihu Basin. China Waterpower Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
Wang ZH, Cheng ZY, Kou Y, Chen Y (2002) Dry/wet climate change since 960 A. D. in Taihu Drainage Basin of China. Sci Geogr Sin 22(5):546–551 (in Chinese)
Wang WG, Shao QX, Peng SZ, Zhang ZX, Xing WQ, An GY, Yong B (2011) Spatial and temporal characteristics of changes in precipitation during 1957–2007 in the Haihe River basin, China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess. doi:10.1007/s00477-011-0469-5
Xu ZX, Takeuchi K, Ishidaira H (2002) Long-term trends of annual temperature and precipitation time series in Japan. J Hydrosci Hydraul Eng 20(2):11–26
Xu ZX, Takeuchi K, Ishidaira H (2003) Monotonic trend and step changes in Japanese precipitation. J Hydrol 279(1–4):144–150
Xu ZX, Takeuchi K, Ishidaira H, Li JY (2005) Long-term trend analysis for precipitation in Asian Pacific FRIEND river basins. Hydrol Process 19(18):3517–3532
Xu ZX, Liu ZF, Fu GB, Chen YN (2010) Trends of major hydroclimatic variables in the Tarim River basin during the past 50 years. J Arid Environ 74(2):256–267
Yamamoto R, Iwashima T, Sanga NK, Hoshiai M (1985) Climatic jump: a hypothetical concept in climate diagnosis. J Meteorol Soc Jpn 63(6):1157–1160
Yan MH, Deng W, Ma XH (2001) Climate variation in the Sanjiang Plain disturbed by large scale reclamation during the last 45 years. Acta Geographica Sinica 56(2):159–170 (in Chinese)
Yang YW, Yu Q, Wang J (2004) Spatio-temporal variations of principal climatic factors in North China and part of East China within past 40 years. Resour Sci 26(4):45–50 (in Chinese)
Yin YX, Xu YP, Chen Y (2009) Maximum water level of Taihu Lake and its relation to the climate change and human activities. Resour Environ Yangtze Basin 18(7):609–614 (in Chinese)
Zhang YL, Qin BQ, Chen WM, Hu WP (2003) The analysis of variation characteristics of sunshine in the recent forty years in Wuxi Region. Sci Meteorol Sin 23(2):231–237 (in Chinese)
Zhang Q, Xu CY, Zhang ZX, Chen YQ, Liu CL, Lin H (2008) Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation maxima during 1960–2005 in the Yangtze River basin and possible association with large-scale circulation. J Hydrol 353(3–4):215–227
Zhang Q, Xu CY, Zhang ZX, Chen YD (2009) Changes of temperature extremes for 1960–2004 in Far-West China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 23(6):721–735
Zhao FF, Xu ZX, Huang JX (2007) Long-term trend and abrupt change for major climate variables in the upper Yellow River basin. Acta Metall Sin 21(2):204–214
Zuo HC, Lu SH, Hu YQ (2004) Variations trend of yearly mean air temperature and precipitation in China in the last 50 years. Plateau Meteorol 23(2):238–244 (in Chinese)
Acknowledgment
This study is jointly supported by the NSFC project (National Natural Science Foundation of China) (Grant No. 50979005), National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2010CB428402), Ministry of Science and Technology, China, and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2009SAP-5). Great thanks should be extended to two reviewers and to Prof. George Christakos, the editor-in-chief, for their crucial comments which greatly improved the quality of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, L., Xu, ZX. & Huang, JX. Spatio-temporal variation and abrupt changes for major climate variables in the Taihu Basin, China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 26, 777–791 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-011-0547-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-011-0547-8