Gradation of the significance level of trends in precipitation over China

Abstract

How to accurately detect and estimate the significance level of trends in hydroclimate time series is a challenge. Building on correlation analysis, we propose an approach for evaluating and grading the significance level of trend in a series, and apply it to evaluate the changes in annual precipitation in China. The approach involved first formulating the relationship between the correlation coefficient and trend’s slope. Four correlation coefficient thresholds are then determined by considering the influence of significance levels and data length, and the significance of trends is graded as five levels: no, weak, moderate, strong and dramatic. A larger correlation coefficient reflects a larger slope of trend and its higher significance level. Results of Monte-Carlo experiments indicated that the correlation coefficient-based approach not only reflects the magnitude of a trend, but also considers the influence of dispersion degree and mean value of the original series. Compared with the Mann–Kendall test used commonly, the proposed approach gave more accurate and specific gradation of the significance level of trends in annual precipitation over China. We find that the precipitation trends over China are not uniform, and the effects of global climate change on precipitation are not strong and limited to some regions.