Professor Zhu Kezhen opening up a path for research on climatic change in China

Abstract

Professor Zhu Kezhen (Co-Ching Chu, 1890–1974) was an outstanding scientist and educator. His research covered three fields including meteorology, geography and history of natural science. He published about 300 papers related to these fields. The historic climatic change in China was a subject which he most intensively studied. Eight papers related to this subject were published by Professor Zhu Kezhen from 1925 to 1972. The last brilliant paper on the title, “A Primary Study on Climatic Change in Past 5000 Years in China” reconstructed the climatic change history based on temperature index, particularly on winter temperature index. He concluded that the temperature was 2°C higher in 5,000–3,000 a B.P. than at present and temperature in January was 3–5°C higher then. He found that, in the latest 3000 years, there were major cycles of 400–800 years with an amplitude of 1–2°C and small cycles of 50–100 years with an amplitude of 0.5–1°C. The temperature curves of the past 5,000 years which Zhu Kezhen reconstructed in China basically alike theδ ¹⁸O record from camp Century Ice Core in Greenland. He was particularly good at analysing and summarizing historic data of phenology, archeology and meteorology and comparing with that at present. He also closely followed the international progress in science and technology. He considered that the study of historic climtic change was very useful to the forecast of future climatic change. His method in research and achievement opened up a new path for study of the climatic change in China.