Changes in the diurnal temperature range over East Asia from 1901 to 2018 and its relationship with precipitation

Xiubao Sun, Chunzai Wang () and Guoyu Ren
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Xiubao Sun: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chunzai Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Guoyu Ren: China University of Geosciences

Climatic Change, 2021, vol. 166, issue 3, No 18, 17 pages

Abstract: Abstract Since the 1950s, the East Asian diurnal temperature range (DTR), defined as the difference between the daily maximum (Tmax) and minimum temperatures (Tmin), has gradually decreased. Precipitation changes have often been cited as a primary cause of the change. However, the East Asian DTR change before 1950 and its relationship with precipitation remain unclear. Here, we used a newly developed China Meteorological Administration-Land Surface Air Temperature dataset v1.1 to examine the climatological patterns and long-term trends of the DTR in East Asia from 1901 to 2018 and its relationship with precipitation. The mean annual DTR averaged over East Asia for 1951–2018 was approximately 10.0 °C. East Asian DTR changes during 1901–2018 show two distinct characteristics. First, the DTR decreased significantly by approximately 0.60 °C during 1901–2018, and the decrease rate in the second half of the twentieth century (by ~0.53 °C) was significantly larger than that over the rest of the Northern Hemisphere and the global land due to rapid urbanization over East Asia. Second, before the 1950s, the DTR in East Asia showed a significant non-linear increase especially in middle latitude areas, mainly due to the warming rate of Tmax is higher than that of Tmin. Additionally, we found that the spatial pattern of long-term DTR change shows a significant negative correlation with mean precipitation patterns except in arid and semi-arid areas during 1901–2018. The decreasing trend of DTR gradually became smaller from arid regions to humid regions during 1901–2018, mainly because the difference between Tmax and Tmin warming rate gradually became smaller.

Keywords: DTR; Long-term trends; Precipitation; East Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03120-1

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