Characteristics of Long-Term Climate Change and the Ecological Responses in Central China

Abstract

easurements of air temperature and precipitation at 35 stations in Hubei Province, China, during 1962?2011 are used to investigate the regional climate change. There is an increasing trend for observed air temperature (0.23°C decade?1), which is slightly higher than that from multiple model simulations/predictions [phase 5 of CMIP (CMIP5) datasets] (0.16°C decade?1). The observed precipitation increases at the rate of 11.4 mm decade?1, while the CMIP5 results indicate a much lower decreasing trend (0.8 mm decade?1) in this region. To examine the ecological responses to the climate changes in Hubei Province, annual gross primary productivity (GPP) and net primary productivity (NPP) products during 2000?10 and leaf area index (LAI) products during 1981?2011 are also analyzed. It is discovered that GPP, NPP, and LAI increase at the rate of 1.8 TgC yr?1 yr?1, 1.1 TgC yr?1 yr?1, and 0.14 m2 m?2 decade?1, respectively. A linear model is further used to conduct the correlation analyses between climatic parameters (i.e., air temperature and precipitation) and ecological indicators (i.e., GPP, NPP, and LAI). The results indicate that the air temperature has a significant positive correlation with LAI (R2 = 0.311) and GPP (R2 = 0.189); precipitation is positively correlated with NPP (R2 = 0.209). Thus, it is concluded that the air temperature exerts a stronger effect on the ecosystem than precipitation in Hubei Province over the past decades.