Climate Changes over the Past 2000 Years in China

According to the temperature and wet/dry sequences synthesized reconstructed from the regional high-resolution paleoclimatic sequences based on the proxies of abundant and well-dated documentary records and natural archives, the basic characteristics of climate change over the past 2 000 years in China is summarized. On the centennial scale, there were 4 warm periods and 3 cold periods, but regional differences existed among the 5 sub-regions. In the Eastern China, wet/dry changes showed decadal, multi-decadal and centennial oscillations, while the drought/flood spatial patterns were different between the centennial warm periods and the cold periods. The wet/dry changes in the Northwest China and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were different from that in the Eastern China.