Identifying the Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature reconstruction and instrumental data forthe past 1000 years shows that climate change in the last millennium includes long-term trends and variousoscillations. Two long-term trends and the quasi-70-year oscillation were detected in the global temperatureseries for the last 140 years and the NH millennium series. One important feature was emphasized thattemperature decreases slowly but it increases rapidly based on the analysis of different series. Benefits can beobtained of climate change from understanding various long-term trends and oscillations. Millennial temperatureproxies from the natural climate system and time series of nonlinear model system are used in understanding thenatural climate change and recognizing potential benefits by using the method of wavelet transform analysis. Theresults from numerical modeling show that major oscillations contained in numerical solutions on theinterdecadal timescale are consistent with that of natural proxies. It seems that these oscillations in the climatechange are not directly linked with the solar radiation as an external forcing. This investigation may concludethat the climate variability at the interdecadal timescale strongly depends on the internal nonlinear effects in theclimate system.
The dry-wet variability in western China and its spatiotemporal structure during the last 4-5 centuries was examined using 24 climate proxies from sediments, ice cores, historical documents, and tree rings. Spatial patterns and temporal evolutions of dryness and wetness were not only extracted from the proxy data using rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) analysis for the last 4 centuries, but also for instrumental data in the last 40 years. The leading five REOF modes indicate that 5 dry-wet variation centers exist in western China. Moreover, long-term variability in dryness and wetness is seen on long (centennial) to short (inter-decadal) timescales. An out-of-phase relationship for the inter-decadal variation was observed between the Hetao-upper Yangtze River region and north Xinjiang, indicating influences on dry-wet variations of the East Asian summer monsoon and the westerly winds over the two regions, respectively. A particularly long dry spell was found in the central Tibetan Plateau in the 19th century. A predominance of wet decades in the last 4 centuries was found in the arid and Hetao regions. Three regional dry-wet series with annual resolution in north Xinjiang, the upper Yellow River valley, and the Hetao area were constructed for analyses of the last 500 years. Dry-wet oscillations with periodicities of 16, 50, and 150 years in north Xinjiang, 50 years in the upper Yellow River valley, and 70-80 years in the Hetao region were identified by wavelet analysis. In general, these periods correspond to large-scale oscillations found in the climate system, are mainly related to ocean-atmosphere interaction.
Temperature and precipitation are two main variables in climate changes.Spatial-temporal resolutions of temperature and precipitation,and recent studies on climate variability in China are summarized and discussed in this review.Recent 100-year datasets are used to reveal quasi-20-year and quasi-70-year oscillations in eastern China,as well as precipitation pattern shift in China.An oscillation with the timescale of 70-80 years is introduced in eastern China.derived from 500-year and 1000-year proxy and observation records.Finally,it is noted that more research achievements on climate change in China depend upon developing or reconstructing long term series,studying in regularity and mechanism,as well as upon prediction and service etc.
Climate in China's Mainland can be divided into the monsoon region in the southeast and the westerly region in the northwest as well as the intercross zone,i.e.,the monsoon northernmost marginal active zone that is oriented from Southwest China to the upper Yellow River,North China,and Northeast China.In the three regions,dry-wet climate changes are directly linked to the interaction of the southerly monsoon flow on the east side of the Tibetan Plateau and the westerly flow on the north side of the Plateau from the inter-annual to inter-decadal timescales.Some basic features of climate variability in the three regions for the last half century and the historical hundreds of years are reviewed in this paper. In the last half century,an increasing trend of summer precipitation associated with the enhancing west- erly flow is found in the westerly region from Xinjiang to northern parts of North China and Northeast China. On the other hand,an increasing trend of summer precipitation along the Yangtze River and a decreasing trend of summer precipitation along the monsoon northernmost marginal active zone are associated with the weakening monsoon flow in East Asia. Historical documents are widely distributed in the monsoon region for hundreds of years and natural climate proxies are constructed in the non-monsoon region,while two types of climate proxies can be com- monly found over the monsoon northernmost marginal active zone.In the monsoon region,dry-wet variation centers are altered among North China,the lower Yangtze River,and South China from one century to an- other.Dry or wet anomalies are firstly observed along the monsoon northernmost marginal active zone and shifted southward or southeastward to the Yangtze River valley and South China in about a 70-year timescale.Severe drought events are experienced along the monsoon northernmost marginal active zone during the last 5 centuries.Inter-decadal dry-wet variations are depicted by natural proxies for the last 4–5 centuries in several areas over the non-monsoo
The time series of HadCRUT3 global-mean surface air temperature(GSAT) anomaly,Pacific decadal oscillation(PDO) index,and the equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature(SST) were utilized,and their long-term trends and multiple time-scale periodic oscillations were explored in this study.A long-term trend with a warming rate about 0.44°C /century during 1850-2008,two cool floors occurred respectively around 1910 and during 1950-1970,and three warm flats happened in the 1870s,1940s and since the year 1998 were found in the GSAT.In this duration,the variability of GSAT can be well reconstructed by the quasi-21-year,the quasi-65-year,and century-scale oscillations.The recent decadal warm flat is caused by their positive phase overlapping from these three oscillations.The maximum rising temperature reached 0.26°C was simulated in 2004 by the three oscillations.The quasi-21-year and the quasi-65-year oscillations were possibly caused by solar radiation and internal variability of the ocean-atmosphere system.Therefore,an outlook of GSAT for the 21st century was made based on the long-term trend and these three oscillations.It was expected that a cool floor and a warm flat of the GSAT would appear in the 2030s and 2060s,respectively.However,the highest warming range is predicted about 0.6°C,it is less than the threshold 2°C and IPCC projection.
