Climate data from the Climatic Research Unit （CRU） for the period 1901-2013 are used to investigate the drought response to air temperature change over China on the centennial scale. Drought is observed to have incr...Climate data from the Climatic Research Unit （CRU） for the period 1901-2013 are used to investigate the drought response to air temperature change over China on the centennial scale. Drought is observed to have increased evidently across China, except for some regions in eastern China. This increase is much stronger in northern China compared to southern China, especially in Northwest and North China. These change characteris- tics of drought are closely associated with air temperature change, with the severe droughts in the major drought episodes of the last century generally coinciding with higher temperatures. The significantly increasing trend of drought in China based on observations only appears when considering the effects of air temperature change, which can explain -49% of droughts in observations and 30%-65% of droughts in Coupled Model Intereomparison Project Phase 5 （CMIP5） model simulations. Furthermore, the response of drought to air temperature change generally increases as the drought time scale increases. Furthermore, drought shows relatively high sensitivity in spring and early summer in China on the centennial scale.展开更多
基金supported by the ‘Strategic Priority Research Program-Climate Change: Carbon Budget and Relevant Issues’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No.XDA05090306)the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41305061)the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2012CB955401)
文摘Climate data from the Climatic Research Unit （CRU） for the period 1901-2013 are used to investigate the drought response to air temperature change over China on the centennial scale. Drought is observed to have increased evidently across China, except for some regions in eastern China. This increase is much stronger in northern China compared to southern China, especially in Northwest and North China. These change characteris- tics of drought are closely associated with air temperature change, with the severe droughts in the major drought episodes of the last century generally coinciding with higher temperatures. The significantly increasing trend of drought in China based on observations only appears when considering the effects of air temperature change, which can explain -49% of droughts in observations and 30%-65% of droughts in Coupled Model Intereomparison Project Phase 5 （CMIP5） model simulations. Furthermore, the response of drought to air temperature change generally increases as the drought time scale increases. Furthermore, drought shows relatively high sensitivity in spring and early summer in China on the centennial scale.
