Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Department of Meteorology, and Center for Advanced Data Assimilation and Predictability Techniques, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States.
Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 17;7:42310. doi: 10.1038/srep42310.
Understanding the trend of localized severe weather under the changing climate is of great significance but remains challenging which is at least partially due to the lack of persistent and homogeneous severe weather observations at climate scales while the detailed physical processes of severe weather cannot be resolved in global climate models. Based on continuous and coherent severe weather reports from over 500 manned stations, for the first time, this study shows a significant decreasing trend in severe weather occurrence across China during the past five decades. The total number of severe weather days that have either thunderstorm, hail and/or damaging wind decrease about 50% from 1961 to 2010. It is further shown that the reduction in severe weather occurrences correlates strongly with the weakening of East Asian summer monsoon which is the primary source of moisture and dynamic forcing conducive for warm-season severe weather over China.
了解气候变化下局地强天气的变化趋势具有重要意义，但仍具有挑战性，这至少部分是由于缺乏气候尺度上持续和均匀的强天气观测，同时强天气的详细物理过程在全球气候模式中无法得到解决。本研究基于 500 多个有人值守站的连续和连贯的强天气报告，首次表明过去五十年中国强天气发生的显著减少趋势。1961 年至 2010 年间，雷暴、冰雹和/或大风等强天气日数减少了约 50%。进一步表明，强天气发生减少与东亚夏季风减弱密切相关，东亚夏季风是中国暖季强天气的主要水汽和动力强迫源。
