Spatiotemporal Variation Characteristics of Precipitation in the Huaihe River Basin, China, as a Result of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is a global scientific problem, and its impact on the spatiotemporal variations of precipitation has been a crucial research topic. Although previous studies have used different methods to evaluate the precipitation characteristics of the Huaihe River Basin, the time series were short and the few stations could not fully and accurately represent the precipitation characteristics. In this study, daily temperature and precipitation data were collected from 233 meteorological stations in the Huaihe River Basin from 1960–2020. The Mann–Kendall test was used to analyze the trend and significance of interannual and interseasonal scale changes in temperature and precipitation in the Basin, respectively. The correlation between temperature and precipitation was analyzed using the Pearson correlation coefficient method. The spatial distribution of the significance of temperature and precipitation changes and the spatial distribution of the correlation between temperature and precipitation in the basin were plotted. The temperature in the basin tended to increase on interannual and interseasonal scales, with more noticeable changes in spring and winter. Precipitation showed an overall decreasing trend but an increasing trend in localized areas in the south. A decreasing trend in the interseasonal variation scale was observed in spring, an increasing trend in winter, a decreasing trend in the northeastern region in summer, an increasing trend in the southwestern region, and an increasing trend in the northern and southern parts in autumn were observed. The correlation between average temperature and precipitation on interannual and interseasonal scales was analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient method, and the annual average temperature and annual average precipitation in the Huaihe River basin were found to be negatively correlated, except for sporadic areas that showed extremely weakly positive correlations or no correlations.