The spatial patterns of precipitation anomalies during five 30-yr warm periods of 691-720, 1231-1260, 1741-1770, 1921-1950, and 1981-2000 were investigated using a dryness/wetness grading dataset covering 48 stations from Chinese historical documents and 22 precipitation proxy series from natural archives. It was found that the North China Plain （approximately 35^-40~N, east of 105~E） was dry in four warm periods within the centennial warm epochs of 600-750, the Medieval Warm Period （about 900-1300） and after 1900. A wet condition prevailed over most of China during 1741-1770, a 30-yr warm peak that occurred during the Little Ice Age （about 1650-1850）. The spatial pattern of the precipitation anomaly in 1981-2000 over East China （25^-40~N, east of 105~E） is roughly consistent with that in 1231 1260, but a difference in the precipitation anomaly appeared over the Tibetan Plateau. The spatial patterns of the precipitation anomalies over China varied between all five 30-yr warm periods, which implies that the matching pattern between temperature and precipitation change is multiform, and the precipitation anomaly could be positive or negative when a decadal warm climate occurs in different climate epochs. This result may provide a primary reference for the mechanism detection and climate simulation of the precipitation anomaly of the future warm climate.
The general characteristics of climate changes over the past 2000 years in China,regional differences and uncertainties were analyzed based on the recently peer-reviewed high time-resolution climatic reconstructions.The results showed that there exists four warm periods of the temperature variation in China since the Qin Dynasty,including the western and eastern Han Dynasties(200 BC-AD 180),the Sui and Tang dynasties(541-810),the Song and Yuan dynasties(931-1320),and the 20th century,and three cold phases involving the Wei,Jin,and North-South Dynasties(181-540),the late Tang Dynasty(811-930),and the Ming and Qing dynasties(1321-1920).The Song and Yuan warm period is consistent with the Medieval Warm Period over the Northern Hemisphere,and the cold phases of the North-South Dynasties and the Ming and Qing dynasties are paralleled to the Dark Ages Cold Period and the Little Ice Age,respectively.The 13th-15th century could be a shift to the wet condition of the climate,and the low precipitation variability is exhibited in western China prior to 1500.In the context of the climate warming,the pattern of the drought in north and flood in south is prevalent over the eastern China.In addition,the published reconstructions have a high level of confidence for the past 500 years,but large uncertainties exist prior to the 16th century.
The snow-cover days over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River （MLRYR） in the winter of 1670 were extracted from Chinese historical documents. By these records, the winter temperature anomalies （compared to the mean of 1961-1990） recorded at seven meteorological stations and the regional mean winter temperature were estimated. The results show that： （1） There was an average of about 30 snow-cover days over the MLRYR region in 1670, ranging from 11-20 days in Shanghai and eastern Zhejiang to 5140 days in eastern Hunan Province. The snow-cover days averaged about 40 days in Anqing and Nan- cheng, and ranged from 30 to 40 days in Quzhou, Jingdezhen, and Nanchang; and （2） the regional mean winter temperature in 1670 was estimated to be approximately 4.0 ℃ lower than that of 1961-1990. The maximum negative anomaly of 5.6℃ occurred in Nanchang and the minimum anomaly of-2.8 ℃ was detected in Quzhou. Both of these were lower than that of the coldest winter during the instrumental observation period of 1951-2010. This research could not only provide a method to es- timate historical climate extremes, but also provide a background to understand the recent instrumentally climate extremes.
