Impacts of urbanization on precipitation patterns in the greater Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan region in northern China
Open Access
- 9 December 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Environmental Research Letters
- Vol. 16 (1), 014042
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd212
Abstract
We present a statistical method to quantify the contribution of urbanization to precipitation changes during 1958-2017 across the greater Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) metropolitan region in northern China. We find distinct trends in precipitation in the past six decades: decreasing in annual and summer while increasing in other seasons. The spatial patterns of precipitation show discernible terrain-induced characteristics with high values in the buffer zones of plain and mountain areas and low values in the northwestern mountainous regions. Our results indicate that although urbanization has limited impacts on the trends and spatial patterns of precipitation, it has a positive contribution to the changes in precipitation for about 80% of the comparisions conducted, especially in autumn (100%), with the negative contribution being dominant in summer (66.67%). In addition, these results are sensitive to the classifications of urban and rural stations, suggesting that how to classify urban/rural areas is a crucial step to estimate the potential contribution of urbanization to precipitation changes. These findings also support that urbanization can diversify and enhance the variations in precipitation, with urban areas becoming a secondary center along with more increasing or less decreasing trends in precipitation.Funding Information
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M632333)
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (51609242)
- National Key Research & Development Program of China (2017YFC1502701)
This publication has 41 references indexed in Scilit:
- Urban precipitation extremes: How reliable are regional climate models?Geophysical Research Letters, 2012
- Investigation into the daily precipitation variability in the Yangtze River Delta, ChinaHydrological Processes, 2012
- On the impact of urbanization on summertime thunderstorms in Atlanta: Two numerical model case studiesAtmospheric Research, 2008
- A Theoretical and Numerical Study of Urban Heat Island–Induced Circulation and ConvectionJournal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 2008
- Climate Response to Rapid Urban Growth: Evidence of a Human-Induced Precipitation DeficitJournal of Climate, 2007
- A Review of Current Investigations of Urban-Induced Rainfall and Recommendations for the FutureEarth Interactions, 2005
- The East Asian summer monsoon: an overviewArchiv für Meteorologie, Geophysik und Bioklimatologie Serie A, 2005
- Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climateNature, 2003
- A closer look at United States and global surface temperature changeJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2001
- Urban effects on precipitation amountProgress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 1998