Changes of Surface Air Temperature in China During 1951—2004

A data set from 726 stations was used to analyze surface air temperature change in Mainland China. The data set has been processed more carefully, and the main in-homogeneities existing in the monthly mean temperature data have been checked and corrected. The widely accepted procedures for creating area-averaged climatic time series and for calculating linear trend have been used. Analyses have been made for annual and monthly mean temperature. Annual mean surface air temperature in Mainland China as a whole rose by about 1.3 ℃ for the last 54 years, with a warming rate of about 0.25 ℃/10 a. The warming is more rapid than the average values of the world and the Northern Hemisphere. The most evident warming occurred in winter and spring as expected. Northeast China, North China and Northwest China experienced more significant warming in terms of annual mean temperature, while a cooling trend for southwestern China reported in earlier studies is still continuing. Summer mean temperature in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River also decreased in the last 55 years. We have also tentatively analyzed the possible causes for the observed change in temperature.