Spatiotemporal Variability of Monthly and Annual Snow Depths in Xinjiang, China over 1961–2015 and the Potential Effects

Abstract

The spatiotemporal variability of snow depth supplies important information for snow disaster prevention. The monthly and annual snow depths and weather data (from Xinjiang Meteorological Observatory) at 102 meteorological stations in Xinjiang, China over 1961–2015 were used to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of snow depths from different aspects. The empirical orthogonal function (EOF), the modified Mann–Kendall method, Morlet wavelet, Daubechies wavelet decomposition and cross wavelet transform were applied to investigate the trend and significance, spatial structure, periods, decomposed series and coherence of monthly and annual snow depths. The results indicated that: (1) The value of EOF first spatial mode (EOF1) of the monthly and annual snow depths in north Xinjiang were larger than south Xinjiang, indicating greater variability of snow depths in north Xinjiang. (2) The change points of annual snow depth mainly occurred during 1969–1979 and 1980–1990. The annual snow depth of most sites showed increasing trends, but with different slope magnitudes. (3) The sites that had main periods of 2–8 and 9–14 years of monthly and annual snow depths (detected by the Morlet wavelet) mainly distributed in northern Xinjiang. The sites that had main periods of 15–20 years of monthly and annual snow depths mainly distributed in southwestern Xinjiang. (4) By using the Daubechies wavelet, the decomposed annual snow depth in entire Xinjiang tended to increase. (5) Through the cross wavelet transform, annual snow depths in entire Xinjiang had good correlations with annual precipitation or relative humidity, and showed a low negative correlation with minimum temperature or sunshine hours. In conclusion, the monthly and annual snow depths had comprehensive spatiotemporal variability but had overall increasing trend during 1961–2015.