Intercomparison of the Time for Climate Abrupt Change between the Tibetan Plateau and Other Regions in China
青藏高原与中国其他地区气候突变时间的比较

Based on the station observation data from 1961 to 2006 in China,the trends and time points of abrupt change for surface air temperature(SAT) and precipitation are analyzed.The results show that,(1) for SAT,the annual and seasonal mean SAT in the Tibetan Plateau(TP) have shown increase trends,and the annual mean SAT begins to increase from the mid-1980s while the fast and significant increase in SAT starts from the mid-1990s,which is later than that in Northeast China,North China,Northwest China,and the Huaihe River regions,and similar to that in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and South China;in all seasons,the climate jumping points for fast increase of SAT in TP are all later than that in Northeast China;and the detection for annual and winter mean temperature shows significant meridional difference,earlier in the northern area and later in the southern area,in East China;(2) for precipitation,there is no significant trend for the annual precipitation,while that in winter and spring increases significantly,that in summer decreases weakly and that in autumn decreases significantly.The signals of climate jump for precipitation are weaker than those of SAT,and no sudden changes are detected for annual and spring precipitation;there are large differences in the direction and time for climate jump of precipitation.According to the above analysis,the significant fast climate change in TP is later than that in the areas to the north of the Yangtze River in East China,especially in winter and spring,which likely results from the increase of albedo due to increase of snow cover and the melting of glaciers.