Climate changing characteristics of Zhangye City in Heihe River basin during 1968–2005

Abstract

At present, researches on climate change of the Heihe River basin mainly focus on the relationship between basin climate change and regional water resources, regional desertification and dynamic climatic seasons of sandstorm, but less on climate change of oasis region, where there are more intense and frequent human activities. Based on data of precipitation, temperature, strong wind and dust events frequencies obtained from the six meteorological stations of Zhangye region in Heihe River basin, the features of climate change during 1968–2005 were carefully studied. Results show that the regional temperature rise rate exceeded the average level of China. The annual precipitation changed a little, but the precipitation had a slowly increasing trend in spring and winter. Frequencies of strong wind and sandstorm days show obviously descending trends, which had a close correlation with the regional temperature rise and the precipitation increase in spring and winter. Meanwhile, further human economic activities and exploitations to the oasis in the inland valley of arid regions also affected the climate change of this region, which has a sensitive and fragile eco-environment.

Keywords

Heihe River basin / Zhangye City / climate change / human activity