Journal article

Impacts of urbanization on precipitation patterns in the greater Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan region in northern China

X Song, Y Mo, Y Xuan, QJ Wang, W Wu, J Zhang, X Zou

Environmental Research Letters | IOP Publishing Ltd | Published : 2021

Abstract

We present a statistical method to quantify the contribution of urbanization to precipitation changes during 1958–2017 across the greater Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan region in northern China. We find distinct trends in precipitation in the past six decades: decreasing in annual and summer while increasing in other seasons. The spatial patterns of precipitation show discernible terrain-induced characteristics with high values in the buffer zones of plain and mountain areas and low values in the northwestern mountainous regions. Our results indicate that although urbanization has limited impacts on the trends and spatial patterns of precipitation, it has a positive contribution to the c..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Natural Science Foundation of China


Funding Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research & Development Program of China (2017YFC1502701), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51979271, 51609242), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015XKMS034), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M632333). This project was also funded by the Priority Academic Program Development (PAPD) of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions. The first author is also grateful for support from China Scholarship Council. YX's contribution is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering Newton Fund (Grant Ref: UUFIP\10021). We are grateful to Dr. Feng Kong (School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University) for his support for the rainfall data collection.