Magnitude and Frequency of Temperature and Precipitation Extremes and the Associated Atmospheric Circulation Patterns in the Yellow River Basin (1960–2017), China

Abstract

Since there are many destructive effects caused by extreme climate events in the Yellow River, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the variations of climatic extremes in this key basin. We used a meteorological dataset from 66 stations within the Yellow River basin (YRB) for the period 1960−2017 to calculate magnitude and frequency of precipitation/temperature extremes. We also analyzed the relationships between the main large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns (ACPs) and precipitation/temperature extremes. The trends in precipitation extremes were nonsignificant, only a few stations were characterized by significantly increasing or decreasing anomalies; this indicates the precipitation intensity may have been strengthened, and the extreme rainfall duration appears to have been reduced during 1960−2017. The trends of magnitudes for “cold” extremes were larger than those for “warm” extremes, changes of trends in frost days were higher than those for summer days, and the trends in increasing warm nights were higher than those of warm days. The influence of the El Niño−Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) on temperature extremes outweighed the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) for the other extreme climate indices. The YRB might be at risk of increased extreme high temperature events, and more attention should be paid to this higher risk of extreme climatic events.

Keywords

• precipitation
• temperature
• climatic extremes
• atmospheric circulation patterns
• the yellow river basin