Variability of Extreme Temperature Events in the Northwest China during 1960-2008

Abstract-Extreme events of climate change, have recently occurred frequently and caused impassible damages of living environments. The main objective of this research was to detect the possible changes of extreme temperature events in the Northwest of China. Several climate extreme indices were analyzed, including the numbers of cold days, warm days, cold nights, warm nights, annual extremely high temperature and annual extreme low temperature. The results suggested that the regional temperature of Northwest of China had become warmer since 1980's and it was similar to that of the global and China trends. The strongest increasing tendency was detected in case of warm nights and decreasing tendency in case of cold nights. Significant increase of warm days and warm nights had been respectively recorded during autumn and winter. Cold days and cold nights significantly decreased in autumn. Increasing tendency of warm days and warm nights was particularly evident for mountain and basin stations, and the decreasing tendency of cold nights and cold days was obvious in basin stations, but some stations where the trend of cold days and cold nights was not obvious concentrated in Beijiang area.