Study on the contribution rate of urbanization and air-sea circulation factors to the increase of rainstorm in China

Abstract

Abstract More and more attention has been paid to the serious disasters caused by extreme precipitation events. The relationship between climate change and extreme precipitation has become the hottest science foreland issue. Based on the study of daily rainstorm observation records of 659 meteorological stations in China from 1951 to 2010, this paper shows that rapid urbanization may trigger a significant increase in large-scale rainstorm in China. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) In terms of time, China’s rainstorm rainfall, rainy days and rainfall intensity increased significantly, reaching 68.71%, 60.15% and 11.52% respectively. In space, the torrential rains in China gradually migrated from the southeastern coast to the spatial transition process of gradient expansion in Central, Southwest, North, and Northeast China. (2) The variance explanations of the rapid urbanization factors to the rainstorm rainfall, rainy days and rainfall intensity in China are 61.54%, 58.48% and 65.54% respectively, while the variance explanations of the climatic factors are only 24.30%, 26.23% and 21.92% respectively. Rapid urbanization factors are likely to trigger a significant increase in rainstorm rainfall in China. (3) The panel data of China’s county-level total population and the annual average of visibility days are significantly spatially correlated with rainstorm rainfall, rainy days and rainfall intensity. The correlation coefficient gradually increases with age, further indicating that rapid urbanization has triggered a significant increase in large-scale inter-decadal rainstorm in China.