Non-Negligible Urbanization Effects on Trend Estimates of Total and Extreme Precipitation in Northwest China

Chunli Liu, Panfeng Zhang (), Guoyu Ren, Haibo Du, Guowei Yang and Ziying Guo
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Chunli Liu: College of Geographic Science and Tourism, Jilin Normal University, Siping 136000, China
Panfeng Zhang: College of Geographic Science and Tourism, Jilin Normal University, Siping 136000, China
Guoyu Ren: Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Haibo Du: School of Geographical Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
Guowei Yang: National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China
Ziying Guo: College of Geographic Science and Tourism, Jilin Normal University, Siping 136000, China

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-18

Abstract: Quantifying and removing urbanization-induced biases in existing precipitation datasets is critical for climate change detection, model assessment, and attribution studies in Northwest China (NWC). The precipitation observational stations of NWC were divided into rural (reference) stations and urban stations using the percentage of urban areas calculated from the land use/land cover (LULC) satellite data of the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover project. The annual extreme precipitation index series for urban stations (all stations) and rural stations from 1961 to 2022 were calculated based on the categorization of meteorological stations, and the urbanization effects and their contributions to precipitation index series were quantitatively evaluated through estimating trends in the difference series between all stations and the rural stations. The results showed that the urbanization effect varies among different regions and indices. The R10mm, R95pTOT, R99pTOT, and PRCPTOT indices in the sampled urban areas of NWC exhibited statistically significant negative urbanization effects, reaching −0.075 days decade −1 , −0.038 % decade −1 , −0.024 % decade −1 , and −0.035 % decade −1 , respectively. However, the R95pTOT, SDII, CDD, and CWD indices at the urban station of the largest city, Urumqi, have been significantly positively affected by urbanization, which is inconsistent with the sampled urban areas of NWC, where the urbanization effect reached 0.069 % decade −1 , 0.054 mm·d −1 decade −1 , 2.319 days decade −1 , and 0.112 days decade −1 , respectively. Our analysis shows that the previously reported regional increase in total precipitation and extremes has been underestimated due to the negative urbanization effects in the precipitation data series of urban stations.

Keywords: daily precipitation dataset; extreme precipitation indices; urbanization effects; climate change; Northwest China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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