TY - JOUR
T1 - Rapid urbanization and changes in spatiotemporal characteristics of precipitation in Beijing metropolitan area
AU - Song, Xiaomeng
AU - Zhang, Jianyun
AU - Aghakouchak, Amir
AU - Roy, Shouraseni Sen
AU - Xuan, Yunqing
AU - Wang, Guoqing
AU - He, Ruimin
AU - Wang, Xiaojun
AU - Liu, Cuishan
N1 - Funding Information:
Rainfall data to support this article are available from the Hydrological Data of Haihe River Basin (in Chinese), the Annual Hydrological Report of China (Volume: III), released by Ministry of Water Resources of China. For further information or right to access to the material used in this paper, readers can also contact the Beijing Hydrological Center (http://www.bjswzz.com/) of the Beijing Water Authority (http://www.bjwater.gov.cn/pub/bjwater/index. html). Weather data supporting Figure 12a are available as in Table S1 in the supporting information. For annual precipitation, urban development, and water resources data used in this article, readers can contact the corresponding author X. Song. This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB951103), the Postgraduate Dissertation Foundation of the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute (LB51302), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (L1322014, 41330854, 41371063, and 51309155). We are thankful to the Beijing Hydrological Stations, Beijing Water Authority for providing the precipitation data. We are also grateful to Xuesong Zhang, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and University of Maryland for his suggestions. We also thank the Editor L. Ruby Leung and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and comments, which were most helpful in improving this article. We are also very grateful to Peter Muller for all the editorial suggestions he made for significantly improving the paper.
PY - 2014/10/16
Y1 - 2014/10/16
N2 - This study investigates changes in temporal trends and spatial patterns of precipitation in Beijing over the last six decades. These changes are discussed in the context of rapid urbanization and the growing imbalance between water supply and demand in Beijing. We observed significant decreases in precipitation amounts from 1950 to 2012, with the annual precipitation decreasing by 32% at a decadal rate of 28.5 mm. In particular, precipitation decrease is more pronounced in the summer and warm seasons when water use is at its seasonal peak. We further analyzed hourly precipitation data from 43 rain gauges between 1980 and 2012 to examine the spatiotemporal characteristics of both precipitation amount and intensity across six distinct subregions in Beijing. No significant spatial variations in precipitation changes were identified, but slightly greater amounts of precipitation were noted in the urban areas (plains) than in the surrounding suburbs (mountains), due to the effect of urbanization and topography. Precipitation intensity has increased substantially, especially at the hourly duration, as evidenced by the more frequent occurrence of extreme storms. The observed decreased water availability and the increase in extreme weather events require more integrated water management, particularly given the expectation of a warmer and more variable climate, the continued rapid growth of the Beijing metropolis, and the intensifying conflict between water supply and demand.
AB - This study investigates changes in temporal trends and spatial patterns of precipitation in Beijing over the last six decades. These changes are discussed in the context of rapid urbanization and the growing imbalance between water supply and demand in Beijing. We observed significant decreases in precipitation amounts from 1950 to 2012, with the annual precipitation decreasing by 32% at a decadal rate of 28.5 mm. In particular, precipitation decrease is more pronounced in the summer and warm seasons when water use is at its seasonal peak. We further analyzed hourly precipitation data from 43 rain gauges between 1980 and 2012 to examine the spatiotemporal characteristics of both precipitation amount and intensity across six distinct subregions in Beijing. No significant spatial variations in precipitation changes were identified, but slightly greater amounts of precipitation were noted in the urban areas (plains) than in the surrounding suburbs (mountains), due to the effect of urbanization and topography. Precipitation intensity has increased substantially, especially at the hourly duration, as evidenced by the more frequent occurrence of extreme storms. The observed decreased water availability and the increase in extreme weather events require more integrated water management, particularly given the expectation of a warmer and more variable climate, the continued rapid growth of the Beijing metropolis, and the intensifying conflict between water supply and demand.
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U2 - 10.1002/2014JD022084
DO - 10.1002/2014JD022084
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84929595921
VL - 119
SP - 11,250-11,271
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
SN - 2169-897X
IS - 19
ER -