XIE Yun, ZHANG Ruzheng, YIN Shuiqing, TIAN Dandan, GAO Ge. Long-term trend of air humidity over China in the context of global warming during 1961—2010[J]. Advances in Water Science, 2020, 31(5): 674-684. DOI: 10.14042/j.cnki.32.1309.2020.05.004
Citation: XIE Yun, ZHANG Ruzheng, YIN Shuiqing, TIAN Dandan, GAO Ge. Long-term trend of air humidity over China in the context of global warming during 1961—2010[J]. Advances in Water Science, 2020, 31(5): 674-684. DOI: 10.14042/j.cnki.32.1309.2020.05.004

Long-term trend of air humidity over China in the context of global warming during 1961—2010

  • Air humidity is one of the most important meteorological elements, which is closely related to the temperature and precipitation. Long-term trend of air humidity reflects the change of climate system. According to the third national report on climate change of China, relative humidity over China has demonstrated a sharp decrease around the year 2003, probably due to the substitution of manual stations with automatic stations around the same year. Further research that involves using more data on homogenous relative humidity is required. This study includes daily temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity data corrected by the Meteorological Information Center of China Meteorological Administration and showing good homogeneity at 824 meteorological stations over China during the period from 1961 to 2010. Linear regression analysis, Mann-Kendall trend test and partial correlation analysis methods were used to detect long-term trends of the vapour pressure and relative humidity over China and the impact of temperature and precipitation changes on the trends. The results indicated the following: ① Annual average vapour pressure nationwide is increasing generally, with 90.3% of the stations showing increasing trends. In terms of seasons, vapour pressure mainly exhibits an increasing trend in different seasons across the country, with exception of a decreasing trend in the Loess Plateau and Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau areas and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin in spring and summer and in South China in autumn. ② Annual average relative humidity nationwide is generally decreasing, with 64.1% of the stations showing decreasing trends. Stations with increasing trends are mainly distributed as follows:from northern Hebei to northern Liaoning, from southern Shaanxi to Huang Huai, western Sichuan, and most areas of the Northwestern District of China. In terms of seasons, in spring, summer and autumn, the relative humidity in most areas of central and eastern China decreases on the whole, whereas, in winter, most areas show increasing trends except Northeast China and Yunnan which show decreasing trends. ③ The annual average vapour pressure nationwide is mainly positively correlated with the temperature and precipitation, where the positive correlation with the temperature is stronger than that with the precipitation. The annual mean relative humidity is generally negatively correlated with the temperature whereas it is mainly positively correlated with the precipitation.
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