Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Trends and periodicity of daily temperature and precipitation extremes during 1960–2013 in Hunan Province, central south China

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this study, the trends and periodicity in climate extremes are examined in Hunan Province over the period 1960–2013 on the basis of 27 extreme climate indices calculated from daily temperature and precipitation records at 89 meteorological stations. The results show that in the whole province, temperature extremes exhibit a warming trend with more than 50% stations being statistically significant for 7 out of 16 temperature indices, and the nighttime temperature increases faster than the daytime temperature at the annual scale. The changes in most extreme temperature indices show strongly coherent spatial patterns. Moreover, the change rates of almost all temperature indices in north Hunan are greater than those of other regions. However, the statistically significant changes in indices of extreme precipitation are observed at fewer stations than in extreme temperature indices, forming less spatially coherent patterns. Positive trends in indices of extreme precipitation show that the amount and intensity of extreme precipitation events are generally increasing in both annual and seasonal scales, whereas the significant downward trend in consecutive wet days indicates that the precipitation becomes more even over the study period. Analysis of changes in probability distributions of extreme indices for 1960–1986 and 1987–2013 also demonstrates a remarkable shift toward warmer condition and increasing tendency in the amount and intensity of extreme precipitation during the past decades. The variations in extreme climate indices exhibit inconstant frequencies in the wavelet power spectrum. Among the 16 temperature indices, 2 of them show significant 1-year periodic oscillation and 7 of them exhibit significant 4-year cycle during some certain periods. However, significant periodic oscillations can be found in all of the precipitation indices. Wet-day precipitation and three absolute precipitation indices show significant 1-year cycle and other seven provide significant power at the 4-year period, which are mainly found during 1970–1980 and after 1992.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alexander LV, Zhang X, Peterson TC, Caesar J, Gleason B, Tank A, Haylock M, Collins D, Trewin B, Rahimzadeh F, Tagipour A, Kumar KR, Revadekar J, Griffiths G, Vincent L, Stephenson DB, Burn J, Aguilar E, Brunet M, Taylor M, New M, Zhai P, Rusticucci M, Vazquez-Aguirre JL (2006) Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation. J Geophys Res-Atmos 111(D5). doi:10.1029/2005jd006290

  • Brown SJ, Caesar J, Ferro CAT (2008) Global changes in extreme daily temperature since 1950. J Geophys Res 113:D05115. doi:10.1029/2006JD008091

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gemmer M, Fischer T, Jiang T (2011) Trends in precipitation extremes in the Zhujiang River basin, South China. J Clim 24:750–761

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guan YH, Zhang XC, Zheng FL, Wang B (2014) Trends and variability of daily temperature extremes during 1960-2012 in the Yangtze River Basin, China. Glob Planet Chang 124:79–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Han LF, Xu YP, Yang L (2015) Changing structure of precipitation evolution during 1957-2013 in Yangtze River Delta, China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 29:2201–2212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huang J, Sun SL, Xue Y, Zhang JC (2014) Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation indices during 1961–2010 in Hunan Province, central south China. Theor Appl Climatol 118:581–595

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huang SF, Li JG, Xu M (2012) Water surface variations monitoring and flood hazard analysis in Dongting Lake area using long-term Terra/MODIS data time series. Nat Hazards 62(1):93–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Insaf TZ, Lin S, Sheridan SC (2012) Climate trends in indices for temperature and precipitation across New York state, 1948-2008. Air Qual Atmos Health 6(1):247–257

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2013) Climate change 2013: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, p 1535

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall MG (1975) Rank correlation methods. Griffin, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Livada I, Assimakopoulos VD (2007) Spatial and temporal analysis of drought in Greece using the standardized precipitation index (SPI). Theor Appl Climatol 89:143–153

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lucero OA, Rozas D (2002) Characteristics of aggregation of daily rainfall in a middle-latitudes region during a climate variability in annual rainfall amount. Atmos Res 61:35–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moberg A, Jones PD (2005) Trends in indices for extremes in daily temperature and precipitation in central and western Europe, 1901-99. Int J Climatol 25:1149–1171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moron V, Vautard R, Ghil M (1998) Trends, interdecadal and interannual oscillations in global sea-surface temperatures. Clim Dynam 14(7–8):545–569

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Özger M, Mishra AK, Singh AP (2010) Scaling characteristics of precipitation data in conjunction with wavelet analysis. J Hydrol 395:279–288

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson TC, Folland C, Gruza G, Hogg W, Mokssit A, Plummer N (2001) Report of the activities of the working group on climate change detection and related rapporteurs. Tech. Doc. 1071, 146 pp, World Meteorological Organization, Geneva

  • Peterson TC (2005) The workshop on enhancing south and central Asian climate monitoring and indices. Pune, India, February: 14–19

  • Piao S, Ciais P, Huang Y, Shen ZH, Peng SS, Li JS, Zhou LP, Liu HY, Ma YC, Ding YH, Friedlingstein P, Liu CZ, Tan K, Yu YQ, Zhang TY, Fang JY (2010) The impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in China. Nature 467:43–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodríguez-Puebla C, Encinas AH, Nieto S, Garmendia J (1998) Spatial and temporal patterns of annual precipitation variability over the Iberian Peninsula. Int J Climatol 18(3):299–316

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soltani M, Laux P, Kunstmann H, Stan K, Sohrabi MM, Molanejad M, Sabziparvar AA, Ranjbar Saadat Abadi A, Ranjbar F, Rousta I, Zawar-Reza P, Khoshakhlagh E, Soltanzadeh I, Badu CA, Azizi GH (2015) Assessment of climate variations in temperature and precipitation extreme events over Iran. Theor Appl Climatol: 1–21

  • Su BD, Gemmer M, Jiang T (2008) Spatial and temporal variation of extreme precipitation over the Yangtze River Basin. Quatern Int 186:22–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Torrence C, Compo GP (1998) A practical guide to wavelet analysis. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 79(1):61–78

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang B, Zhang M, Wei J, Wang SJ, Li SS, Ma Q, Li XF, Pan SK (2013a) Changes in extreme events of temperature and precipitation over Xinjiang, Northwest China, during 1960–2009. Quatern Int 298:141–151

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang WG, Shao QX, Yang T, Peng SZ, Yu ZB, Taylor J, Xing WQ, Zhao Z, Sun FC (2013b) Changes in daily temperature and precipitation extremes in Yellow River basin, China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 27:401–421

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang WG, Xing WQ, Yang T, Shao QX, Peng SZ, Yu ZB, Yong B (2013c) Characterizing the changing behaviours of precipitation concentration in the Yangtze River Basin, China. Hydro Process 27(24):3375–3393

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang XL, Chen H, Wu Y, Feng Y, Pu Q (2010) New techniques for detection and adjustment of shifts in daily precipitation data series. J Appl Meteor Climatol 49(12):2416–2436

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westra S, Alexander LV, Zwiers FW (2013) Global increasing trends in annual maximum daily precipitation. J Clim 26:3904–3918

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu YQ, Li SC, Cai YL (2005) Wavelet analysis of rainfall variation in the Hebei Plain. SCI China Ser D 48:2241–2250

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang T, Wang X, Zhao C, Chen X, Yu Z, Shao Q, Xu CY, Xia J, Wang W (2011) Changes of climate extremes in a typical arid zone: observations and multimodel ensemble projections. J Geophys Res 116:D19106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yin H, Donat MG, Alexander LV, Sun Y (2015) Multi-dataset comparison of gridded observed temperature and precipitation extremes over China. Int J Climatol 35(10):2809–2827

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • You QL, Fraedrich K, Min JZ, Kang SC, Zhu XH (2013) Can temperature extremes in China be calculated from reanalysis? Glob Planet Chang 111:268–279

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhai P, Zhang X, Wan H (2005) Trends in total precipitation and frequency of daily precipitation extremes over China. J Clim 18:1096–1108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang DQ, Feng GL, Hu JG (2008a) Trend of extreme precipitation events over China in last 40 years. Chinese Phys B 17(2):736–742

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Q, Xu CY, Zhang Z, Chen YD, Liu CL, Lin H (2008b) Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation maxima during 1960–2005 in Yangtze River Basin and possible association with large-scale circulation. J Hydrol 353:215–227

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Q, Singh VP, Peng JT, Chen YD, Li JF (2012) Spatial-temporal changes of precipitation structure across the Pearl River Basin, China. Theor Appl Climatol 110:229–244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Yang F (2013) RClimDex (1.1) user manual. (Available at http: // cccma. Seos. Uvic. Ca /ETCCDI/software.shtml)

  • Zhang XB, Alexander LV, Hegerl GC, Jones P, Tank AK, Peterson TC, Trewin B, Zwiers FW (2011) Indices for monitoring changes in extremes based on daily temperature and precipitation data. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Chang 2:851–870

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou BT, Xu Y, Wu J, Dong SY, Shi Y (2016) Changes in temperature and precipitation extreme indices over China: analysis of a high-resolution grid dataset. Int J Climatol 26:1051–1066

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and constructive comments that improved the paper. Funding for this study was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant 41472238, the Construct Program of the Key Discipline in Hunan Province of China under grant 20110001, Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department of China under grant 14A097, and Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate under grant CX2016B211.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China

    Ajiao Chen & Xinguang He

  2. School of the Environment, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia

    Huade Guan

  3. College of Resources Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Yi Cai

Authors
  1. Ajiao Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Xinguang He
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Huade Guan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yi Cai
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xinguang He.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Chen, A., He, X., Guan, H. et al. Trends and periodicity of daily temperature and precipitation extremes during 1960–2013 in Hunan Province, central south China. Theor Appl Climatol 132, 71–88 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2069-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2069-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation