Climatic warming in China during 1901–2015 based on an extended dataset of instrumental temperature records

Abstract

Monthly mean instrumental surface air temperature (SAT) observations back to the nineteenth century in Ch ina are synthesized fro m different sources via specific quality-control, interpolation, and homogenizat ion. Co mpared with the first homogenized long-term SAT dataset for China by Cao et al. (2013), wh ich contained 18 stations mainly located in the middle and eastern part of China, the present dataset includes homogenized monthly SAT series at 32 stations, with an extended coverage especially towards western Ch ina. M issing values are interpolated by using observations at nearby stations including those from neighboring countries. Cross validation shows that the mean bias error (MBE) is generally small and falls between 0.45C and -0.35C. Multiple ho mogenizat ion methods and available metadata are applied to assess the consistency of the time series and to adjust inhomogeneity biases. The homogenized annual mean SAT series show a range of t rends between 1.1 and 4.0C/century in northeastern China, between 0.4 and 1.9C/century in southeastern China, and between 1.4 and 3.7C/century in western China to the west of 105E (fro m the beginning years of the stations to 2015). The unadjusted data include unusually warm records during the 1940s and hence tend to underestimate the warming trends at a number of stations. The mean SAT series for China based on the Climate Anomaly Method shows a warming trend of 1.56C/century during 1901-2015, larger than those based on other currently available datasets .