Abstract
Persistent extreme heat events (PEHEs) exert a more negative impact on society, including agriculture, plant phenology, power production and human health, compared to general EHEs. The temporal and spatial characteristics of summer PEHEs in eastern China were analysed based on a daily maximum temperature dataset from 759 stations over the period of 1961–2018. The results show the following: Persistent distributions of PEHEs show that they are characterized by an exponential decay with a drop in the decay rate. In terms of spatial distribution, there is an apparent regional difference in the duration of PEHEs. North China is dominated by multi-frequency and short-duration EHEs, while South China is the opposite. PEHEs in North China and the Huanghuai region mainly occur in June-July but mostly in July and August in South China. Strongly responding to global warming, the frequency and duration of PEHEs in North China have increased since the 1990s. However, the frequency of PEHEs in North China and the Huanghuai region has shown opposite trends in June-July since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Affected by the atmospheric circulations, the regional differences in PEHE frequency are also apparent. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the PEHEs in North China and the Huanghuai area have shown an increasing trend in August. The short-term PEHEs in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and South China increased rapidly in the 2000s, while long-term PEHEs increased in the 2010s. This study implies that attention should be paid to not only the frequency of EH days but also to the persistence of EHE which is a key characteristic of damaging EH.
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Data availability
The NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The observed daily surface air temperature data for 2374 stations that are available from the National Weather Information Center of the China Meteorological Administration.
Code availability
The code analysed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The data sets of the observed daily surface air temperature data were obtained from the CMA (http://data.cma.cn). The data sets of the NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis were obtained from the NOAA (https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded). We would like to thank these organizations for providing valuable climate datasets. We sincerely appreciate the feedback of the editor and two anonymous reviewers.
Funding
This study was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant numbers 2017YFC1502303 and 2018YFA0606301) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (grant number 41875083 and 41875096).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design.
Conceptualization: Naihui Zang, Junhu Zhao, Pengcheng Yan and Guolin Feng; methodology: Naihui Zang, Junhu Zhao, Pengcheng Yan; formal analysis and investigation: Naihui Zang, Han Zhang, Shankai Tang; Writing: Naihui Zang.
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Zang, N., Zhao, J., Yan, P. et al. Interdecadal variations of persistent extreme heat events in eastern China under global warming. Theor Appl Climatol 146, 349–364 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03723-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03723-9