Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Regionalization of precipitation and the spatiotemporal distribution of extreme precipitation in southwestern China

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Natural Hazards Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Daily precipitation data from 1951 to 2010 at 33 meteorological stations in five provinces/cities, including Sichuan Province, Yunnan Province, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guizhou Province and Chongqing City, are used to partition the study area based on precipitation and analyze the spatiotemporal distribution of extreme precipitation. The rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) analysis method is used to divide the study area into five parts according to precipitation. The precipitation exhibited greater fluctuations in the last two decades. This finding indicates that extreme precipitation events are increasing. The frequent occurrence of extreme precipitation has made drought and flood disasters more serious. The Mann–Kendall test (M–K test) and moving t test methods are used to analyze the jump and monotonic trends of extreme precipitation indices. It is determined that extreme precipitation indices, including Rx1d, Rx5d, R95p, R99p, CWD and R10 mm, exhibited a weak upward trend during the past 60 years, suggesting that the precipitation amount in the study area decreased slightly, but the maximum daily precipitation amount (Rx1d) and the extremely wet day precipitation (R99p) increased. This finding indicates that precipitation is more concentrated and the extreme precipitation is more serious. The jump for most of the extreme precipitation indices occurred in the 1990s. In terms of spatial scale, extreme precipitation indices, except CDD and CWD, exhibited an increasing trend from the northwest to the southeast. The regions with especially high or low values are easy to identify. Drought risk in northwest Sichuan and the junction of Sichuan and Yunnan is higher. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and southern part of Yunnan Province have a higher flood risk. The trends of nine extreme precipitation indices also demonstrated the spatial differences. There are more stations exhibiting upward trends than stations showing downward trends for six extreme precipitation indices. The risk of drought/flood may increase in Yunnan and Guangxi, and the storm flood risk in Chongqing exhibited an increasing trend.

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

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bates BC, Kundzewicz ZW, Wu S, Palutikof JPE (2008) Climate change and water. Technical paper of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, Geneva: IPCC Secretariat

  • Cai X, Cai L, Li C, Wu Z (2012) Temporal changes and mutation analysis of precipitation in Shanxi Province. Agric Res Arid Areas 2:247–254 (In Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Da Silva RM, Santos CAG, Moreira M, Corte-Real J, Silva VCL, Medeiros IC (2015) Rainfall and river flow trends using Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator statistical tests in the Cobres River basin. Nat Hazards 77(2):1205–1221

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ding YH, Ren GY, Zhao ZC (2007) Detection, causes and projection of climate change over China: an overview of recent progress. Adv Atmos Sci 24(6):954–971

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Du H, Xia J, Zeng S (2014) Regional frequency analysis of extreme precipitation and its spatio-temporal characteristics in the Huai River Basin, China. Nat Hazards 70(1):195–215

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo R, Li F, He W, Yang S, Sun G (2011) Spatial and temporal variability of annual precipitation during 1958–2007 in loess plateau, China. In Li DL, Liu Y, Chen YY (eds.) IFIP Advances in information and communication technology, pp. 551–560

  • Huang JX, Xu ZX (2009) Climate change and its evolution trend of Taihu basin in 1954–2006. Resour Environ Yangtze Basin 18(1):33–40 (In Chinese)

    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. pp. 1–1552. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

  • Kaiser HF (1958) The varimax criterion for analytic rotation in factor analysis. pp. 187–200

  • Karl TR, Nicholls N, Ghazi A (1999) Clivar/GCOS/WMO workshop on indices and indicators for climate extremes workshop summary. Clim Change 42(1):3–7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim KY, Wu QG (1999) A comparison study of EOF techniques: analysis of non-stationary data with periodic statistics. J Clim 12:185–199

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li J, Carlson BE, Lacis AA (2009) A study on the temporal and spatial variability of absorbing aerosols using total ozone mapping spectrometer and ozone monitoring instrument aerosol index data. J Geophys Res Atmos 114(D9):D09213

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu BH, Xu M, Henderson M (2004) Taking China’s temperature: daily range, warming trends, and regional variations, 1995–2000. J Clim 17(22):4453–4462

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu XR, Li GP, Fan GZ, Cheng BY, Li HQ (2007) Spatial and temporal characteristics of precipitation resource in southwest china during 1961–2000. J Nat Resour 22(5):783–792 (In Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu XC, Xu ZX, Yu RH (2011) Trend of climate variability in China during the past decades. Clim Change 109(3–4):503–516

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manhique AJ, Reason CJC, Silinto B, Zucula J, Raiva I, Congolo F, Mavume AF (2015) Extreme rainfall and floods in southern Africa in January 2013 and associated circulation patterns. pp. 679–691

  • Min SK, Zhang XB, Zwiers FW et al (2011) Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes. Nature 470:378–381

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Qin DH, Stocker T, Authors and TSU (2014) Highlights of the IPCC working group I fifth assessment report. Progressus Inquisitiones DE Mutatione Climatis 10(1):1–6 (In Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Richman MB (1986) Rotation of principal components. J Climatol 6(3):293–335

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Su B, Gemmer M, Jiang T (2008) Spatial and temporal variation of extreme precipitation over the Yangtze River Basin. Quatern Int 186(1):22–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tack AJM, Mononen T, Hanski I (2015) Increasing frequency of low summer precipitation synchronizes dynamics and compromises metapopulation stability in the Glanville fritillary butterfly. Proceedings. Biological sciences/The Royal Society, 282(1806)

  • Thibeault JM, Seth A (2014) Changing climate extremes in the Northeast United States: observations and projections from CMIP5. Clim Change 127(2):273–287

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Unal YS, Deniz A, Toros H, Incecik S (2012) Temporal and spatial patterns of precipitation variability for annual, wet, and dry seasons in Turkey. Int J Climatol 32(3):392–405

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang MT, Wang X, Huang WH, Zhang YF, Ma J (2012) Temporal and spatial distribution of seasonal drought in Southwest of China based on relative moisture index. Trans Chin Soc Agric Eng 28(19):85–92 (In Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang X, Liang P, Li C, Wu F (2014) Analysis of regional temperature variation characteristics in the Lancang River Basin in southwestern China. Quatern Int 333:198–206

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wei FY (1999) The statistics and prediction of climate. China Meteorological Press, Beijing (In Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Xu ZX, Takeuchi K, Ishidaira H (2003) Monotonic trend and step changes in Japanese precipitation. J Hydrol 279(1–4):144–150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • You QL, Kang SC, Aguilar E, Yan YP (2008) Changes in daily climate extremes in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau during 1961–2005. J Geophys Res 113:D07101

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuan WD, Zheng JK, Dong K (2014) Spatial and temporal variation in extreme precipitation events in southwestern china during 1962–2012. Resour Sci 36(4):766–772 (In Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Hantosh TH, Albert P, Semawi M, Ali MK, Al-Oulan MHSA, Zatari T, Khelet IAD, Hamoud S, Sagir R, Aguilar E, Demircan M, Eken M, Adiguzel M, Alexander L, Peterson TC, Wallis T, Sensoy S, Melkonyan H, Tagiyeva U, Ahmed N, Kutaladze N, Rahimzadeh F, Taghipour A (2005a) Trends in middle east climate extreme indices from 1950 to 2003. J Geophys Res Atmos 110(D22):D22104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Hegerl G, Zwiers FW, Kenyon J (2005b) Avoiding inhomogeneity in percentile-based indices of temperature extremes. J Clim 18(11):1641–1651

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang MJ, He JJ, Wang BL, Wang SJ, Li SS, Liu WL, Ma XN (2013) Extreme drought changes in Southwest China from 1960 to 2009. J Geog Sci 23(1):3–16 (In Chinese)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang DD, Yan DH, Wang YC, Lu F, Liu SH (2015) GAMLSS-based nonstationary modeling of extreme precipitation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China. Nat Hazards 77(2):1037–1053

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The study was financially supported by the major consulting project of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (2012-ZD-2013). The authors greatly appreciate the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection, Monitoring and Indices. The authors also thank the developer of the RClimDex software.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Xinjiekouwai Street 19, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    L Liu & Z. X. Xu

  2. Joint Center for Global Change Studies (JCGCS), Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Z. X. Xu

Authors
  1. L Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Z. X. Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Z. X. Xu.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, L., Xu, Z.X. Regionalization of precipitation and the spatiotemporal distribution of extreme precipitation in southwestern China. Nat Hazards 80, 1195–1211 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-2018-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-2018-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation