Chen, Yang, Zhai, Panmao

Geophysical Research Letters

Published date May 16, 2017

Revisiting summertime hot extremes in China during 1961-2015: overlooked compound extremes and significant changes

  • Categorizes summertime hot extremes in China into three distinct types, i.e. independent hot days, independent hot nights and compound events, based on differing configurations between daily maximum and minimum temperature
  • Finds that linear trends for multiple indictors of these subtypes and traditionally-defined hot days/nights exhibited remarkable differences in significance, magnitude, and even sign, especially for events involving daytime extremes
  • Uncovers some significant changes masked in conventional analyses
  • Finds, in particular, that the dominance of independent hot days has decayed significantly, accompanied by a rapid boom of compound events and/or independent hot nights in different regions
  • Finds that these nighttime-accentuated hot extremes have exhibited significant increases in duration, intensity and spatial extent, with much stronger trends detected in severest events