Spatial and Temporal Variations in Extreme Precipitation and Temperature Events in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region of China over the Past Six Decades

Abstract

Extreme weather events can cause a lot of damage in highly populated regions, such as in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region (BTHR) in northern China. To understand where and how extreme precipitation and temperature events are changing within the BTHR, data for 1959–2018 from 25 mereological stations were used to detect trends in the intensity, frequency, and duration of these events. The results showed that intensity, accumulated amount, the duration of extreme precipitation events, and the annual number of days with precipitation greater than 50 mm decreased on a regional scale over this 60-year period. Changes in extreme precipitation events at most stations were not statistically significant, although a few stations had a significant downward trend. The combined effects of the East Asian summer monsoon and rapid urbanization are possible reasons for these trends. Both the annual maximum and minimum temperature increased on a regional and local scale. The frequency of extreme hot and cold weather also, respectively, increased and decreased, with consistent patterns on a regional and local scale. However, the spatial changes of these trends were different, reflecting the effects of irrigation and urbanization on the regional surface energy balance. These findings are valuable to decisionmakers involved in disaster prevention in the BTHR and in other highly populated regions worldwide.

A Comprehensive Study of Spatiotemporal Variations in Temperature Extremes across China during 1960–2018

“…In the south of the Yangtze River, the warm indices increase significantly, and the cold indices decrease significantly in Yunnan Province but decrease insignificantly in other regions for TX10p, which is in accordance with the existing research findings [18]. The North China Plain experiences decreasing trends for cold extremes and increasing trends of warm extremes, which is in accordance with the work of Tong et al [26], who found that both the frequency of extreme hot and cold events increases and decreases respectively in this region. Warm extremes and cold extremes show increasing and decreasing trends over northeastern China, which is consistent with the findings of Yu and Li [57].…”

“…Although the variability of temperature extremes has been the focus of attention during the past several decades, most of the previous studies concerning the changing trends of the temperature extremes have ignored their spatial patterns, characteristics and spatiotemporal heterogeneity [10][11][12][13][14][15][21][22][23]52]. Moreover, existing studies mainly relied on the methods of linear trend analysis, Mann-Kendall test and Pearson correlation analysis but failed to consider the spatial and temporal effects in the methods [26,29,53,54]. In this study, we provide a comprehensive investigation of the spatiotemporal variations of the four temperature extremes by using Mann-Kendall test and a spatiotemporal model with respect to covariates from the perspectives of both humans and nature, and this approach incorporates the spatial and temporal effects of extreme indices.…”

“…Additionally, the distances between the meteorological stations and the sea were computed using ArcGIS to characterize the contribution of the sea to extreme temperature changes. Previous studies have enriched the evidence of the impact of urbanization on the climate record and its extremes [24,26,39]. The time series of nighttime light data (NTL) has been used by some researchers to estimate the urbanization process from local and regional to global scales [40][41][42].…”

“…Currently, researches on extreme climate events mainly focus on studying the spatiotemporal changes in temperature extremes, conducting analyses and discussing the various influencing factors involved in extreme temperatures [24][25][26]. Studies have examined extreme temperature changes in parts of China and throughout China, and it has been shown that these changes in extreme temperature are closely related to climate warming and atmospheric circulation based on the result of univariate linear regression and correlation analysis [27][28][29].…”

Investigating the spatiotemporal variations of extreme rainfall and its potential driving factors with improved partial wavelet coherence

“…Extreme rainfall will have a huge impact on the local ecology, industry, and social economy, which has motivated more and more studies to emphasize the importance of extreme rainfall. However, the temporal and spatial distributions of extreme weather events in different regions are quite different (Sridhar et al, 2013;Weldegerima et al, 2018), normally, with different impact ranges, frequencies, durations, and severities (Swain et al, 2019;Fagnant et al, 2020;Tong et al, 2020;Ndlovu et al, 2021). Therefore, it is of great significance to investigate the spatiotemporal variations of extreme rainfall and its potential driving factors for different regions.…”