The Qinling Mountains (QMs) are considered to be the division in geology, geochemistry, and physical geography between northern China and southern China. They have crucial effects on regional climate, especially on rainfall and temperature, and have shown great scientific relevance to climate change research in China. Using the observational daily and monthly rainfall and temperature data derived from meteorological and regional automatic stations—as well as the methods of correlation analysis, climate trend analysis, and Mann–Kendal and t tests—we revealed the spatiotemporal change characteristics of temperature and rainfall and their correlation with elevation, longitude, and latitude. The results show that the annual mean temperature (AMT) underwent a significant increasing trend in the QMs. The maximum AMT increase occurred in spring, and the minimum occurred in summer. Positive anomalies of annual mean rainfall amount (AMRA) occurred in the 1960s, 1980s, and 2010s, and negative anomalies occurred in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s. In the QMs, the amount of moderate rainfall (MR) occupied the maximum proportion and accounted for 27.9% of the AMRA, whereas the torrential rainfall (TR) occupied the minimum proportion and accounted for 12.8%. The AMRA amount significantly decreased by 130.1 mm from the 1980s to the 1990s and accounted for 13.5% of the measure in the 1980s. The AMT and AMRA showed consistent change trends with increases in elevation and latitude and showed the opposite trend as the longitude increased. The results offer a further understanding of the meteorological background of the QMs, helping us in further investigating the potential physical mechanisms that influence the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of temperature and rainfall in the QMs. This study will provide a scientific basis for rainfall and temperature forecasts, with relevance to local ecosystems, agriculture, soil erosion, and the prevention and mitigation of floods in the future.

Urban ventilation corridors are designed to enhance air quality, alleviate urban thermal conditions, reduce pollution and energy consumption, as well as improve human comfort within cities. They play a pivotal role in mitigating environmental impacts, particularly in densely populated urban areas. Based on satellite remote sensing data, meteorological observations, basic geographic information of Zhengzhou City and its surroundings, and urban planning data, we analyzed the urban wind environment, urban heat island, ecological cold sources, and ventilation potential. The findings reveal several key insights: (1) Dominant winds in Zhengzhou City predominantly originate from the northwest, northeast, and south, influenced by topography and the monsoon climate, with seasonal variations. These wind patterns are crucial considerations for designing primary ventilation corridors. (2) The urban heat island exhibits a polycentric spatial distribution, with intensity decreasing from the city center towards the periphery. Ecological cold sources, primarily situated in the city outskirts, act as reservoirs of fresh air that mitigate the urban heat island effect through designated corridors. (3) A preliminary corridor system, termed “eight primary and thirteen secondary corridors”, is proposed for Zhengzhou City based on an integrated assessment of ventilation potential, urban surface roughness, and sky view factor. This research contributes to advancing the understanding of urban ventilation systems and provides practical insights for policymakers, urban planners, and researchers seeking sustainable solutions to mitigate climate impacts in rapidly urbanizing environments in the region.

The Huaihe River basin (HRB) is an important economically developed and grain production region in China, which is severely affected by rainfall anomalies, especially extreme rainfall events (EREs). It is crucial to the features of interdecadal change in EREs and the contribution of EREs to summer-mean total rainfall amount (TRA) over the HRB. Using the observational 24-h ac-cumulated rainfall and the reanalysis products from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF), as well as the methods of composite analysis and Mann–Kendal and running t tests, we revealed that the EREs experienced a significant interdecadal increase from the period 1990–1999 to the period 2000–2009. The EREs, particularly long persistent extreme rainfall events (LPEREs), occurred more frequently over the HRB during the latter period and dominated the interdecadal increase in the summer mean TRA. An anomalous high-pressure ridge and associated anomalous anticyclone appeared around Lake Baikal during the latter period, which led to anomalous northeasterlies along the eastern flank of the anomalous anticyclone, inducing the southward intrusion of cold air flow from higher latitudes and associated anomalous ascent and more active convection over the HRB. As such, more EREs and LPEREs occurred during the latter period. The higher pseudo-equivalent temperatures also support more active convective ascent and relevant more EREs. The results may shed light on further understanding the effect of large-scale atmospheric circulation on the interdecadal variability of EREs over the HRB, helping mitigate the disastrous impacts of EREs on local ecosystems, agriculture, soil erosion, and societies.

Using multisource sea ice fusion data, the spatiotemporal characteristics of sea ice cover were analyzed for the marginal seas of East Asia for the period 2005–2021. The results show that there were obvious differences in the beginning and end dates of the sea ice in the different sea areas. The northern Sea of Japan had the longest ice period, and Laizhou Bay and Bohai Bay in the Bohai Sea had the shortest ice period. The time when the largest sea ice extent appeared was relatively stable and mostly concentrated in late January to mid-February. There were obvious spatial differences in the duration of the sea ice cover in the marginal seas of East Asia. The duration of the sea ice cover gradually decreased from high latitude to low latitude and from nearshore to open seas. The annual average duration of the sea ice cover was more than 100 days in most of the Sea of Japan and approximately 20 days in most of Laizhou Bay and Bohai Bay. The melting speed was significantly faster than the freezing speed in the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea, resulting in asymmetric changes in the daily sea ice extent in the two seas. The increasing trends in the maximum sea ice extent and total sea ice extent were 0.912 × 10⁵ km²/10 yr and 0.722 × 10⁷ km²/10 yr, respectively, from 2005 to 2013, both of which passed the significance test at the 0.05 level.

Fast quality control (FQC) is important to deal with high-frequency observation records at meteorological station networks in time, and may check whether the records fall within a range of acceptable values. Threshold tests in the previous quality control methods for monthly, daily, or hourly observation data do not work well for 0.5 Hz data at a single station. In this study, we develop an algorithm for the automatic determination of maximum and minimum minute thresholds for 0.5 Hz temperature data in the data collection phase of the newly built stations. The fast threshold test based on the percentile threshold (0.1–99.9%) and standard deviation scheme is able to efficiently identify the incorrect data in the current minute. A visual graph is generated every minute, and the time series of the data records and the thresholds are displayed by the automated graphical procedures. The observations falling outside the thresholds are flagged and then a manual check is performed. This algorithm has the higher efficiency and lower computational requirement in identifying out the obvious outliers of 0.5 Hz data in real or near-real time observation. Meanwhile, this algorithm can also find problems in observation instruments. This method is applied to the quality control of 0.5 Hz data at two Tianjin experiment stations and hourly data at one Shenyang experiment station. The results show that this fast threshold test may be a viable option in the data collection phase. The advantage of this method is that the computation requires less memory and the computational burden is reduced for real or near-real time observations, so it may be extended to test other meteorological variables measured by high-frequency measurement systems.