Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Long-term change in surface air temperature over DPR Korea, 1918–2015

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Land surface air temperature (SAT) change is one of the core issues in monitoring and assessing regional climate change. In this study, the characteristics of SAT change over DPR Korea for the period 1918–2015 were investigated using a high-quality historical dataset. Results show that the region-averaged annual mean SAT increased 0.21 °C/decade for the period 1918–2015 on the basis of data from four stations and 0.19 °C/decade for the period 1941–2015 as estimated based on data from nine stations. Before the 1970s, Pyongyang station in the central region experienced the largest warming trend. Linear trends of seasonal mean SAT during 1941–1970 were negative for all seasons in eastern coast and for summer and autumn in western coast and northern inland areas. Since 1971, however, the annual and seasonal mean SAT trends have shifted to positive values in all regions, with winter experiencing the most rapid warming. During the period of global warming slowdown since 1998 or 2000, no significant seasonal warming trend of wintertime was detectable, and this caused the smallest winter warming for the last 45 years. Other seasons also witnessed a generally weakened warming during 1971–2015 compared to that of 1971–2000. The results of the study will help in understanding regional climate change and in assessing the impacts of climate change on economic and natural ecosystems in the country.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aguilar E, Auer I, Brunet M, Peterson TC, Wieringa J (2003) Guidelines on climate metadata and homogenization, WCDMP no. 53, WMO/TD no. 1186. Tech. Rep., World Meteorological Organization

  • Bao B, Ren GY (2014) Climatological characteristics and long-term change of SST over the marginal seas of China. Cont Shelf Res 77:96–106

    Google Scholar 

  • Boulanger JP (2010) A procedure for automated quality control and homogenization of historical daily temperature and precipitation data (APACH): part 1: quality control and application to the Argentine weather service stations. Clim Chang 98(3):471–491

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandsma T, Können GP (2006) Application of nearest-neighbor resampling for homogenizing temperature records on a daily to sub-daily level. Int J Climatol 26:75–89

    Google Scholar 

  • Cao LJ, Zhao P, Yan ZW et al (2013) Instrumental temperature series in eastern and Central China back to the nineteenth century. J Geophys Res 118:8197–8207

    Google Scholar 

  • Chung YS, Yoon MB (2000) Interpretation of recent temperature and precipitation trends observed in Korea. Theor Appl Climatol 67(3–4):171–180

    Google Scholar 

  • Chung UJ, Choi J, Yun I (2004a) Urbanization effect on observed change in mean monthly temperature between 1951–1980 and 1971–2000 in Korea. Climate Change 66:127–136

    Google Scholar 

  • Chung YS, Yoon MB, Kim HS (2004b) On climate variations and changes observed in South Korea. Clim Chang 66(1–2):151–161

    Google Scholar 

  • Ding YH, Ren GY (eds) (2008) Introduction to climate change science of China. China Meteorological Press, Beijing, p 281

    Google Scholar 

  • Dong MY, Zheng-Fang WU, Jiang Y (2009) Comparative analysis of temperature change in the regions of Northeast China and Hokkaido, Japan over the last hundred years. Sci Geogr Sin 29(5):684–689

    Google Scholar 

  • Fujibe F (2009) Detection of urban warming in recent temperature trends in Japan. Int J Climatol 29:1811–1822

    Google Scholar 

  • Fyfe JC, Meehl GA, England MH, Mann ME, Santer BD, Flato GM, Hawkins E, Gillett NP, Xie SP, Kosaka Y, Swart NC (2016) Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown. Nat Clim Chang 6(3):224–228

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen J, Sato M, Ruedy R, Lo K, Lea DW, Medina-Elizade M (2006) Global temperature change. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103(39):14288–14293

    Google Scholar 

  • Hulme M, Zhao Z, Jiang T (2010) Recent and future climate change in East Asia. Int J Climatol 14(6):637–658

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2013) Climate Change 2013: the physical science basis. In: Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM (eds) Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 1535

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones PD (1994) Hemispheric surface air temperature variations: a reanalysis and an update to 1993. J Clim 7:1794–1802

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones PD, Hulme M (1996) Calculating regional climatic time series for temperature and precipitation: methods and illustrations. Int J Climatol 16(4):361–377

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones PD, Moberg A (2003) Hemispheric and large-scale surface air temperature variations: an extensive revision and an update to 2001. J Clim 16(2):206–223

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones PD, Lister DH, Osborn TJ, Harpham C, Salmon M, Morice CP (2012) Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: an extensive revision and an update to 2010. J Geophys Res 117(D5):5127. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JD017139

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jung HS, Choi Y, Oh JH, Lim GH (2002) Recent trends in temperature and precipitation over South Korea. Int J Climatol 22(11):1327–1337

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim SO, Yun JI, Kim SO (2011) Mapping monthly temperature normal across DPR Korea at a landscape scale. Trans Korean Inst Electr Eng 13(1). (in Korean)

  • Kim Y-H, Min S-K, Zhang X, Zwiers F, Alexander LV, Donat MG, Tung YS (2016a) Attribution of extreme temperature changes during 1951–2010. Clim Dyn 46:1769–1782

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim HS, Chung YS, Tans PP, Yoon MB (2016b) Climatological variability of air temperature and precipitation observed in South Korea for the last 50 years. Air Qual Atmos Health 9(6):645–651

    Google Scholar 

  • Kosaka Y, Xie SP (2013) Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling. Nature 501(7467):403–407

    Google Scholar 

  • Moberg A, Alexanderson H (1997) Homogenization of Swedish temperature data. Part II: homogenized gridded air temperature compared with a subset of global gridded air temperature since 1861. Int J Climatol 17:35–54

    Google Scholar 

  • Park B-J, Kim Y-H, Min S-K, Kim M-K, Choi Y, Boo K-O, Shim S (2017) Long-term warming trends in Korea and contribution of urbanization: an updated assessment. J Geophys Res Atmos 122:10637–10654

    Google Scholar 

  • Qian WH, Zhu YF (2001) Climate change in China from 1880 to 1998 and its impacts on the environmental condition. Clim Chang 50:419–444

    Google Scholar 

  • Ren GY, Xu MZ, Chu ZY et al (2005) Changes of surface air temperature in China during 1951–2004. Clim Environ Res 10:717–727

    Google Scholar 

  • Ren GY, Zhou YQ, Chu ZY, Zhang AY, Guo J, Liu XF (2008) Urbanization effects on observed surface air temperature trends in North China. J Clim 21:1333–1348

    Google Scholar 

  • Ren GY, Ding YH, Zhao ZC et al (2012) Recent progress in studies of climate change in China. Adv Atmos Sci 29:958–977

    Google Scholar 

  • Ren GY, Li J, Ren YY et al (2015) An integrated procedure to determine a reference station network for evaluating and adjusting urban bias in surface air temperature data. J Appl Meteor Climate 54:1248–1266

    Google Scholar 

  • Ren GY, Ding YH, Tang GL (2017) An overview of mainland China temperature change research. J Meteor Res 31(1):3–16

    Google Scholar 

  • Sun FH, Ren G, Zhao C et al (2005) An analysis of temperature change under varied underlying surfaces. Sci Geogr Sin 25(2):167–171

    Google Scholar 

  • Sun FH, Yang XQ, Lu S, Yang SY (2006) The contrast analysis on the average and extreme temperature trend in Northeast China. Sci Meteorol Sin 26(2):157–163

    Google Scholar 

  • Sun Y, Zhang XB, Ren GY, Zwiers FW, Hu T (2016) Contribution of urbanization to warming in China. Nat Clim Chang 6:706–709. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2956

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sun XB, Ren GY, Xu WH et al (2017a) Global land-surface air temperature change based on the new CMA GSAT data set. Sci Bull 62(4):236–238

    Google Scholar 

  • Sun XB, Ren GY, Ren YY, Fang YH, Liu YL, Xue XY, Zhang PF (2017b) A remarkable climate warming hiatus over Northeast China since 1998. Theor Appl Climatol 9:1–16

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang GL, Ren GY (2005) Reanalysis of surface air temperature change of the past 100 years over China. Clim Environ Res 10(4):791–798 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Vincent LA, Wang XL, Milewska EJ et al (2012) A second generation of homogenized Canadian monthly surface air temperature for climate trend analysis. J Geophys Res Atmos 117(D18):119–130

    Google Scholar 

  • von Storch (1982) A remark of Chervin/Schneider’s algorithm to test significance of climate experiments with GCMs. J Atmos Sci 39:187–189

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang FX, Liu JP (2016) Spatio-temporal change characteristic of annual temperature range over Northeast China, 1961–2010. J Changchun Normal Univ 2016(8) (in Chinese)

  • WMO (1993) Guide on the Global Data-Processing System (GDPS). World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - WMO, 1993 (WMO, 305)

  • WMO (2004) Fourth Seminar for Homogenization and Quality Control in Climatological Databases World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - WMO, 2004 (WMO/TD, 1236)

  • Yue S, Wang C (2004) Reply to comment by Xuebin Zhang and Francis W. Zwiers on “Applicability of prewhitening to eliminate the influence of serial correlation on the Mann-Kendall test”. Water Resour Res 40(8):4–1

    Google Scholar 

  • Yun J-D (1996) A dictionary of meteorology. Kim Il Sung University Press, Pyongyang, pp 70–72 (in Korean)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Zwiers (2004) Comment on “Applicability of prewhitening to eliminate the influence of serial correlation on the Mann-Kendall test” by Sheng Yue and Chun Yuan Wang. Water Resour Res 40(8):4–1

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang AY, Ren GY, Zhou JX et al (2010) Urbanization effect on surface air temperature trends over mainland China. Acta Meteorol Sin 68(6):957–966 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang L, Ren GY, Ren YY, Zhang AY, Chu ZY, Zhou YQ (2013) Effect of data homogenization on estimate of warming trend: a case of Huairou Station in Beijing Municipality. Theor Appl Climatol 115:365–373

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao CY, Ren GY, Zhang YF et al (2009) Climate change in Northeast China over the past 50 years. J Arid Land Resour Environ 23(7):25–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao P, Jones P, Cao LJ, Yan ZW, Zha SY, Zhu YN, Yu Y, Tang GL (2014) Trend of surface air temperature in eastern China and associated large-scale climate variability over the last 100 years. J Clim 27:4693–4703

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhou YQ, Ren GY (2014) Urbanization effect on long-term trends of extreme temperature events in North China. Plateau Meteorol 33(6):1589–1958

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the State Hydro-Meteorological Administration (SHMA) of PDRK for providing the observed monthly temperature data and the topographical map data of the study region. The first author shows his gratitude to many teachers and students in the School of Environmental Studies of China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, who gave their selfless helps to him during his stay in China. He also appreciates the help from his colleague Kum-Su Li from Kim Il Sung University.

Funding

This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (no. 2018YFA0605603).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, 388 Lumo Road, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Kum-Chol Om, Guoyu Ren, Shuanglin Li, Kang-Chol O & Panfeng Zhang

  2. Department of Meteorology, Faculty of Global Environmental Science, Kim Il Sung University, Daesong District, Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

    Kum-Chol Om & Sang-Il Jong

  3. Department of Meteorology, Faculty of Agricultural Science, Wonsan Agriculture University, Wonsan, Kangwon Province, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

    Kang-Chol O

  4. Department of Meteorology, Faculty of Agricultural Science, Kyeungsang Agriculture College, Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

    Chol-Ho Ryang

Authors
  1. Kum-Chol Om
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Guoyu Ren
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sang-Il Jong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Shuanglin Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Kang-Chol O
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Chol-Ho Ryang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Panfeng Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guoyu Ren.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Om, KC., Ren, G., Jong, SI. et al. Long-term change in surface air temperature over DPR Korea, 1918–2015. Theor Appl Climatol 138, 363–372 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02820-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02820-0

Search

Navigation