An Aridity Trend in China and Its Abrupt Feature in Association with the Global Warming

A distinct aridity tread in China in last 100 years is presented by applying a linear fitting to both the climate re-cords and the hydrological records, which is supported by evidence of environmental changes and seems to be associ-ated with a global warming trend during this period.The Mann Kendall Rank statistic test reveals a very interesting feature that the climate of China entered into a dry regime abruptly in about l920’s, which synchronized with the rapid warming of the global temperature at almost the same time.According to an analysis of the meridional profile of observed global zonal mean precipitation anomalies during the peak period of global warming (1930-1940), the drought occurred in whole middle latitude zone (25oN-55oN) of the Northern Hemisphere, where the most part of China is located in. Although this pattern is in good agreement with the latitude distribution of the difference of zonal mean rates of precipitation between 4 × CO2 and 1 × CO2 simu-lated by climate model (Manabe and Wetherald, 1983), more studies are required to understand the linkage between the aridity trend in China and the greenhouse effect.The EOF analysis of the Northern Hemisphere sea level pressure for the season of June to August shows an ab-rupt change of the time coefficient of its first eigenvector from positive to negative in mid-lP^s, indicating an enhancement of the subtropical high over Southeast Asia and the western Pacific after that time. This is an atmos-pheric circulation pattern that is favorable to the development of dry climate in China.