Regional climate change after the commissioning of the Three Gorges Dam: a case study for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 75:33-51 (2018) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01504 Regional climate change after the commissioning of the Three Gorges Dam: a case study for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River Feifan Ge1, Kebiao Mao1,2,3,*, Yuelin Jiang1, Lei Wang4, Tongren Xu3, Chunyu Gao2, Zhiyuan Zuo2 1School of Resources and Environment, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China 2National Hulunber Grassland Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, PR China 3State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of remote sensing and Digital Earth Research, Chines Academy of Science and Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100086, PR China 4State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100086, PR China *Corresponding author: maokebiao@126.com ABSTRACT: The Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has caused hydrological regime changes in the region downstream of the dam. Based on meteorological station data, this study focused on regional climate changes by evaluating several climatic factors in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and investigated the mutation time of the number of high and low temperature days using the Mann-Kendall (MK) test. We also examined the vegetation response to regional climate change and variations induced by this in the land surface temperature, utilizing the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and land surface temperature (LST) images, respectively. The study defined 3 stages related to the construction and commissioning time of the TGD. The regional climate before and after the commissioning of the TGD displayed opposite trends in temperatures, including daily mean, maximum and minimum temperatures. Temperatures tended to decrease in the northern portion of the study area, and increase in the southern portion of the study area. MK test results indicated that the mutation times of the number of high and low temperature days occurred around the time that the dam began commissioning to regulate the water flow. Precipitation decreased in the study area, particularly in the Dongting Lake region and its surrounding areas. Vegetation coverage generally increased in most of the southern study area in response to the change in climate. Moreover, the LST trends in the different regions were affected by the changes in vegetation. KEY WORDS: High and low temperature days · Spatial variability · Precipitation · Vegetation Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Ge F, Mao K, Jiang Y, Wang L, Xu T, Gao C, Zuo Z (2018) Regional climate change after the commissioning of the Three Gorges Dam: a case study for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Clim Res 75:33-51. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01504 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 75, No. 1. Online publication date: March 21, 2018 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2018 Inter-Research.