Climatic Change of Inland River Basin in an Arid Area

Recently, the impacts of global warming on different climate regions and high altitude areas, as well as responses of special ecosystems and regions to climate change have attracted considerable attentions. The feedbacks on climate change and the variables governing climate regimes show very distinctive pattern across various regions.

Therefore, YANG Yuhui and other researchers examined climate changes in part of Xinjiang, the largest provincial division of China with an area over 1.6 million km2. They examined climate variability at two timescales for northern Xinjiang, China: one is of the past 500 years using dendrochronology data and the other is of the past 50 years using meteorological station data. The regression models built from the 50-year period were used to reconstruct the climate of the 500-year period.

The results indicate that climate underwent many alternating warm-cold and wet-dry periods in the past 500 years. For the 50-year period, they applied the Mann-Kendall jump test to data from 48 meteorological stations to identify possible transition points of temperature and precipitation. For this period, they also analyzed the impacts of latitude, altitude, slope aspect, and human activities on climate variability, aiming to recognize major factors that influence regional climate variability. The results show a warming and wetting trend in the recent 50 years in northern Xinjiang. They determined that natural pattern variability is dominant in the long-term climate variability in the region, but human impacts are non-negligible in the past 50 years. Regional climate variability may be associated with or driven by latitude, altitude, ecosystems, topography, and human activities. The study provides an empirical evidence of the unique regional characteristics of inland river basin in an arid area over the global climate change background.

The findings have been published on Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2012, 107(1-2): 143-154. The paper is also archived at http://www.springerlink.com/content/bg3u419481n8l52j/.

The research is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program: 2010CB951003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 40871059, 40901105), and Western Light Talent Culture Project (no. XBBS200810).