干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Based on the gridded monthly air temperature data and the sea surface temperature (SST) data, the influence of SST change on two global warning periods in the 20th century over the arid central Asia is analyzed. The results show that the SST anomaly produces obvious effect on temperature. The winter temperature of the arid central Asia is much warmer (cooler) when high positive (negative) SST anomaly occurs in the equatorial central-eastern Pacific (ECEP) from autumn to winter. The summer temperature of the arid central Asia is much warmer (cooler) when higher (lower) summer SST occurs in the ECEP, the "warm pool", the Kuroshio area and the westerly drift zone.

The arid central Asia made different responses to the two warming periods from the 1920s to the 1940s and from the 1970s to the 1990s, in close dependence on the anomalies of SST controlling the arid area at the two time intervals. Study shows that the impacts of global warming in the 1920s-1940s and 1970s-1990s differ upon the arid central Asia, resulting in its different responses thereto.