Qinghong Zhang, Xiang Ni, Fuqing Zhang

Scientific Reports

Published date February 17, 2017

Decreasing trend in severe weather occurrence over China during the past 50 years

  • Examines continuous and coherent severe weather reports from 580 manned stations across China
  • Finds that the total number of severe weather days that have thunderstorms, hail and/or damaging wind decreases about 50% from 1961 to 2010
  • Finds that the average number of thunderstorm days per station per year decreases from around 45 in 1960s to about 34 days in 2010, at a rate of 2.82 days per decade
  • Highlights the strong correlation between the reduction in severe weather occurrences and the weakening of the East Asian summer monsoon, which is the primary source of moisture and dynamic forcing conducive for warm-season severe weather over China
  • Presents an analysis of severe weather trends that is one of the most comprehensive to date