The Yellow River is the second largest river in our country, and the source regions of the Yellow River is locateed in the arid and semi-arid region, so the Yellow River is short of water resources seriously. Start from 1990s, source regions of the Yellow River experiences a dry season for near 20 years, and it aggravates the imbalance between supply and demand of water resources in Yellow River basin. Therefore, under the background of global warming, the research on the climate change in source regions of the Yellow River and its influence of river flow and the surface water resources is not only a current scientific topic but also a practical issue for establishing the plan on the sustainable development of water resources. 

The scientists from CAREERI collected the data about the temperature, precipitation and water flow from the hydrologic station, precipitation station and meteorological station along the source regions of the Yellow River, and analyzed the features and trends of the climate change in these areas. And the results show that there is a strong climate shift from warm-dry to warm-humid in the west of Northwest China in the late 1980s, such as Xinjiang and western Hexi Corridor of Gansu. A similar climate change has occurred since the mid-2000s in source regions of the Yellow River, which is located in the east of Northwest China. Under the background of global warming, the climate change leads to precipitation and runoff increasing in these regions. The new observational data of precipitation and runoff in these regions display that the average annual precipitation in source regions of the Yellow River has exceeded the long-time average value in most years since 2004, and then the runoffs through all hydrologic sections on the main stream of the Yellow River have also increased incessantly, exceeding the long-term average since 2008. However, it is difficult to determine the prospects of climate change. 

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science foundation of China (41240002, 91225301), Key Research Program of NSFC (91225302) and Key Deployment Program of CAS (Y322G73001). This paper has been published in the Journal of Glaciology and Geocryology, Aug. 2013. 

The decadal variation of mean air temperature in the source regions of the Yellow River