The use of geographically weighted regression for the relationship among extreme climate indices in China

Abstract

The changing frequency of extreme climate events generally has profound impacts on our living environment and decision-makers. Based on the daily temperature and precipitation data collected from 753 stations in China during 1961-2005, the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model is used to investigate the relationship between the index of frequency of extreme precipitation (FEP) and other climate extreme indices including frequency of warm days (FWD), frequency of warm nights (FWN), frequency of cold days (FCD), and frequency of cold nights (FCN). Assisted by some statistical tests, it is found that the regression relationship has significant spatial nonstationarity and the influence of each explanatory variable (namely, FWD, FWN, FCD, and FCN) on FEP also exhibits significant spatial inconsistency. Furthermore, some meaningful regional characteristics for the relationship between the studied extreme climate indices are obtained. © 2012 Chunhong Wang et al.