LAUSR

A Met Office Hadley Centre regional climate model, HadRM3P, is used to dynamically downscale the NOAA Twentieth Century Reanalysis, version 2c (20CRv2c), to generate a fine-resolution reconstruction of China’s climate from 1851 to 2010. The downscaled dataset has a small warm and seasonal wet bias (1.4°C; 0.9 mm day−1) relative to recent observations but otherwise represents spatial and temporal trends realistically. Analysis focused on temperature and precipitation shows that downscaling 20CRv2c is found to improve its representation of China’s climatological annual cycle, particularly over areas with sparse observational coverage such as the Tibetan Plateau. The downscaled dataset better represents the interannual variability and trends in observed temperature since 1901 and suggests that China has experienced a significant and sustained increase in temperature of 0.05°C (10 yr)−1since the 1850s. Chinese precipitation trends have not changed significantly in the recent past or over the past 160 years. This analysis serves as an initial yet imperative step toward improving in-depth understanding of the characteristics and multidecadal drivers of high-impact events over China such as heat waves, droughts, and extreme precipitation.