Shang et al. (2026) Asymmetric Changes in Heating and Cooling Degree-Day Climates Across China in the Context of Faster Minimum-Temperature Warming

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Atmosphere
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-23
• Authors: Ming Shang, 姚亚楠, Qian Li, Yihang Xing, Jingying Xu, Lei Bai
• DOI: 10.3390/atmos17100919

Research Groups

• National Climate Center of China Meteorological Administration
• Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University

Short Summary

This study investigates temperature trends and degree-day changes in China from 1961 to 2022, revealing a robust heating-side retreat alongside geographically differentiated cooling growth.

Objective

• Investigate the spatially dependent uncertainty of Tmin/Tmax trends, HDD/CDD changes, sensitivity to degree-day bases and periods, and quantify the magnitude of these changes under fixed population and GDP raster distributions.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: China's land cells (15,247) at a national scale.
• Temporal Scale: 1961–2022 period with two sub-periods: 1961–1990 and 1991–2020.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: None mentioned in the paper; daily CN05.1 temperature data is used for analysis.
• Data sources: Daily CN05.1 temperature data from 1961 to 2022.

Main Results

• The Tmin-minus-Tmax trend was positive over 79.5% of weighted area after FDR control, indicating a faster warming rate for Tmin than Tmax.
• Between 1961–1990 and 1991–2020, HDD18 declined from 4714.6 to 4432.8 °C d, whereas CDD26 increased from 29.1 to 37.3 °C d.
• The cooling-share metric R increased from 0.0197 to 0.0264.

Contributions

• This study provides a comprehensive analysis of temperature trends and degree-day changes in China, highlighting the importance of considering spatially dependent uncertainty and sensitivity to degree-day bases and periods.
• The findings contribute to our understanding of climate change impacts on building energy use in China.

Funding

• No specific funding projects or programs are mentioned in the paper.

Citation

@article{Shang2026Asymmetric,
  author = {Shang, Ming and 姚亚楠 and Li, Qian and Xing, Yihang and Xu, Jingying and Bai, Lei},
  title = {Asymmetric Changes in Heating and Cooling Degree-Day Climates Across China in the Context of Faster Minimum-Temperature Warming},
  journal = {Atmosphere},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3390/atmos17100919},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos17100919}
}