An overview of research on climate change in China during the past 2000 years
过去2000年中国气候变化研究

In this paper we summarize the major progress made by the scientists at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences on the study of climate change in China during the past 2000 years and provide insight to future research activities. Faced with hot scientific issue in the field from international projects, much research has been performed at the Institute in the past decade, and many new and significant results are produced in the areas of collection and compilation of various proxy data, construction of an extensive database of climate change in China, reconstruction of temperature and precipitation series, and analyses of the spatial and temporal characteristics of climate change for the past 2000 years. In the future, in addition to reconstructions of climate change based on high-resolution proxies, such as historical documents and tree-ring data, we need to increase the density and spatial coverage of the proxy data. Using the approach of historical climate modeling, the forcing mechanisms of climate change can be examined. With the advantage of the accumulated research results at the Institute, we can also investigate the interactions between climate change and human society during historical periods.