STAGES, CYCLICITY AND TRENDS OF AIR TEMPERATURE IN THE SUBTROPICAL ZONE OF SOUTH CHINA DURING 1901-2011

Understanding the regional air temperature changing process will significantly improve the knowledge of global temperature pattern and its future trend. In this paper, we analyzed the air temperature variations over the period of 1901-2011 in the South China subtropical zone based on the instrumental data from eight weather stations, and reached the conclusions as follows. (1) The annual temperature had experienced an overall rising tendency at an average rate of 1.26℃/100 a during the period 1901-2011, which was equivalent to the global mean rate. (2) Due to the urban heat island effect, some stations in the study area showed significantly higher warming rates than the global value and the mean values within China, while other stations such as Hengchun, Penghu and Macau had little effect of urbanization and showed a warming rate of 0.97℃/100 a. (3) Two significant warming periods, i.e., the period from the mid-1910s to the mid-1950s and the period since the mid-1980s, were identified in the last 110 years, suggesting multidecadal climatic variations. (4) Wavelet analysis further indicated that some interannual oscillations such as 3~6 years ENSO cycles were superimposed on the decadal-scale variations. (5) Trend analysis suggests that the current warming period since 1998 will continue until the mid-2020s, and the temperature in 2100 will be (1.2±0.5)℃ above the mean value of the period of 1961-1990.