Inhomogeneity caused by non-climate factors is common in current observation data of surface climate, exerting a great impact on the reliability of climate change monitoring and studies. Based on metadata of observational stations, the non-homogenized (only quality-controlled) monthly mean surface air temperature data series of 20 stations in Beijing were first tested and adjusted for inhomogeneities by the methods of ACMANT and Pairwise Comparisons and RHtestV4 software. The effects of homogenization on the estimates of temperature trend and its urbanization bias were then evaluated. The results show that, in addition to the change points recorded in the metadata, undocumented change points will have a significant effect on the trends of temperature series, especially for the rural stations, which were mostly missed in the previous works of homogenization. The warming trends of the homogenized temperature series for the whole area (all stations), rural stations and urban stations from 1958 to 2018 are 0.27℃/(10 a), 0.10℃/(10 a) and 0.32℃/(10 a), respectively, with an increase of 0.03℃/(10 a), 0.06℃/(10 a) and 0.02℃/(10 a), respectively, compared to the non-homogenized data. Based on the homogenized data, it was estimated that the urbanization effects in the Beijing Observatory data series from 1958 to 2018 is 0.24℃/(10 a), and the urbanization contribution is 70.2%, which are lower than the previous studies of our group. Hence, there are still obvious inhomogeneities and undocumented change points in the existing temperature data in Beijing area, which will have a significant impact on the accurate estimates of regional average temperature change and the urbanization-induced systematic bias of the temperature data series.
Using data set of 18 Earth system models in CMIP6, the global terrestrial annual gross primary productivity (GPP) changes in the 21st century were projected, and its driving factors were analyzed under four future scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) based on traditional Multi-Model Ensemble Mean (MME) and Reliability Ensemble Averaging (REA) methods. The results show that under the four scenarios, the global terrestrial GPP predicted by the REA method in the future period (2068-2100) would increase by (14.85±3.32), (28.43±4.97), (37.66±7.61), and (45.89±9.21) Pg C compared with that in historical period (1982-2014), where the increment magnitude and uncertainty are significantly lower than those based on MME method. Attribution analysis shows that under the four scenarios, atmospheric CO2 concentration increasing contributes the most to the changes of GPP, whose proportion calculated based on REA method are 140%, 137%, 115% and 75%. With the exception of SSP5-8.5 (24%), warming would lead to global GPP decreasing under other scenarios (-42%, -37%, -16%), which partially offsets the positive contribution of CO2 fertilization effects. There are different latitudinal patterns of the effect of temperature: warming in low latitudes contributes negatively to GPP changes, while it has positive contribution in middle and high latitudes. Precipitation and radiation changes contribute relatively little to GPP changes.
The increase in frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation is prone to flooding in urban areas. The volume capture ratio of annual rainfall is an important design parameter of sponge city, which is directly affected by changes in precipitation. In this paper, the impact of climate change on the volume capture ratio of annual rainfall’s partition is assessed by using the latest daily precipitation data from 70 national meteorological stations in Jiangsu province from 1961 to 2019. The spatial distribution of multi-year average effective precipitation days and effective precipitation in Jiangsu province shows that they are more in the southern region, less in the northern region, more in the coastal areas and less inland areas. The effective precipitation intensity increases from southeast to northwest. In the past 59 years, the number of effective precipitation days, precipitation amount and precipitation intensity in Sunan region have been increasing, with changes of 2.0 d/(10 a), 45.0 mm/(10 a) and 0.2 mm/d per decade, respectively. Effective precipitation has a very obvious multi-decadal characteristics. In 1991-2019, the number of precipitation days, precipitation amount, precipitation intensity are more and stronger than those in other 30-year periods. The design rainfall depth increases with the volume capture ratio of annual rainfall, it is 38.1 mm on average while the volume capture ratio of annual rainfall is 85%. The design rainfall depth in Taihu Lake is small, and it is large in Lianyungang. With the improvement of volume capture ratio of annual rainfall, the difference of the design rainfall depth between the north and the south becomes greater. When the volume capture ratio of annual rainfall is 85%, the largest design rainfall depth is 49.3 mm in Ganyu, and is the smallest 29.0 mm in Dongshan. The former is 1.7 times higher than the later. In the past 59 years, the volume capture ratio of annual rainfall’s partition in the north of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province is zone IV, and most of Sunan area is zone III. The spatial distribution of the minimum design rainfall depth is more fragmented. The minimum design rainfall depth in the southwestern and southeastern parts of Jiangsu is less than 22 mm, and it is larger than 26 mm in Ganyu. The maximum design rainfall depth is gradually increasing from south to north. The proportion of precipitation of different intensity is the key factor that affects the zoning of volume capture ratio of annual rainfall. While the proportions of rain days and rainfall above heavy rain in the effective precipitation increase, the partition of volume capture ratio of annual rainfall rises. The area of zone IV of volume capture ratio of annual rainfall increases significantly in Jiangsu because of the influence of climate change.
Based on the data of snowfall, daily average temperature, daily maximum temperature and daily average wind speed of 43 stations in Northern Xinjiang, the model of ice-snow sport climate index (ISCI) was used to evaluate the climatic suitability and its variation character of winter-spring ice-snow sport in Northern Xinjiang from 1961 to 2017. The results are as follows. (1) The most stations in Northern Xinjiang were suitable for ice-snow sport, the best suitable stations generally distributed in Altay region, but the suitability degree was relatively lower in most stations of Yili Valley, Alataw Pass and Dabancheng etc. (2) All of the stations are suitable for ice-snow sport with altitude above 1200 m. Climatic suitability of ice-snow sport was not linear relationship with snowfall. The station amount of very suitable and unsuitable for ice-snow sport will both enlarge with winter-spring average snowfall increase in Northern Xinjiang. (3) Yearly differences of ISCI are obviously. The regional average ISCI is decrease with time, but the linear change trend of ISCI is increase at some stations but decrease at the others. The suitable stations for ice-snow sport are reducing widely than before 1998. (4) Stations in Altay region are suitable for ice-snow sport in all time stages. Especially in the north of Altay, the ISCI are increase with time stage, whereas the ISCI are decrease periodically at the most stations of Yili Valley.
Women are more vulnerable to climate change, but women’s leadership and participation is important for climate change. The international community has gradually realized the importance of including gender considerations in the process of tackling climate change. Gender issues have been mainstreamed in international climate negotiations, and considerable progress has been made in incorporating gender considerations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) implementation level. Climate financing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund have incorporated gender policy into the institutional policy system, and actively promote the implementation of gender policy at the project level. Although progress has been made, problems still exist such as women’s limited involvement in climate-related decisions and lack of gender response in mitigation. In China, activities need to be carried out to mainstream gender in climate change actions. Suggestions are as follows: promote research on gender issues in the field of climate change to provide support for the implementation of the contract; incorporate gender considerations into climate-related policy systems and build communication and collaboration with gender authorities; strengthen institutional gender capacity of climate change authorities and clarify the responsibilities for promoting gender mainstreaming in climate change; enhance gender mainstreaming in domestic projects, “Belt and Road” projects and “South-South Cooperation” projects; and effectively enhance women’s capacity and participation in climate actions.
Spatial planning is one of the important policy tools to adapt to climate change. It has become an international mainstream policy to integrate the objectives of adaptation to climate change into spatial planning. There are still many problems and challenges in China’s spatial planning to adapt to climate change, including weak objectives and concepts of climate adaptation, mismatch between climate change risk assessment and spatial planning scale, lack of coordination mechanism of adaptation and mitigation strategies, imperfection technical standards, laws and regulations, etc. Combining with the national strategy of adapting to climate change and the objective requirements of the reconstruction of territorial spatial planning system, this paper studies and puts forward the framework system and technical ideas of territorial spatial planning oriented by adapting to climate change, as well as the ideas and suggestions of integrating adaptation to climate change into the compilation and approval, technical standards, implementation supervision, laws and policies of spatial planning, in order to promote the realization of the goal of adaptation to climate change through the compilation and supervision of spatial planning.
The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions information disclosure system is an important prerequisite and fundamental guarantee to ensure the realization of the total GHG emissions control target, the smooth implementation of carbon trading, and the promotion of corporate emissions reduction. Studies have shown that through clear legal system guarantees, perfecting information disclosure paths, and strengthening supervision and other measures, it is possible to effectively establish a GHG emissions information disclosure system. On the basis of the existing domestic carbon market information disclosure, provincial key corporate GHG emissions information disclosure, environmental information disclosure, etc. It is necessary to promote the top-level design of China’s GHG emissions information disclosure in the legal basis, institutional framework, and key elements, and to strengthen the supervision mechanism.
Existing studies evaluating the carbon emission reduction effect of China’s pilot emissions trading schemes (ETSs) suffer a common problem that the sample selection range of the treatment group is obviously larger than the actual coverage of pilot ETSs. Stricter criteria have been applied in identifying the research samples in this study: within the six energy-intensive industrial sub-sectors in China’s provinces from 2005 to 2017, only those in which the volume of ETS-covered enterprises accounts for 60% or more of the sub-sectors’ total are regarded as the treatment group, and all industrial sub-sectors in non-pilot provinces are the control group. Based on the difference-in-difference method, it is found that compared to the control group, China’s pilot ETSs have reduced not only the carbon emissions of the sub-sectors in the treatment group, but also their carbon intensities, demonstrating the mitigation effectiveness of China’s pilot ETSs. The gross output value and per capita output value of the industrial sub-sectors show to some extent a Kuznets curve effect with carbon emissions and carbon intensity, respectively; higher degree of asset liquidity and the profitability and tighter of environmental regulations is conducive to carbon emission reductions. It is thus essential that more sectors other than the power generation will be covered by China’s national ETS as soon as possible. In addition, more efforts should be made to disclose system design and operation data for the purpose of assessing the scheme performance more effectively and in a more transparently manner.
The national carbon emission trading scheme has been constantly improving since 2011, and the benchmark method has been determined as the major one of carbon allowance allocation. The iron and steel industry, which is the second largest contributor of energy consumption and carbon emission after the electric-power industry in China, is playing a significant role in improving the national carbon emission trading market. As a result, it is of great necessity to speed up calculation, design and evaluation of the carbon trading by benchmark methodology. Based on the data submitted directly from iron and steel enterprises to the government in 2018 and the carbon intensity per unit of product, which is the key indicator of iron and steel benchmark, this paper has determined the benchmark methodology for the national iron and steel industry carbon trading. The analysis results show that the benchmark of the iron and steel industry should include steel making and the previous six processes. The average carbon intensity of top 70% or 80% efficient enterprises is recommended as the benchmark. Furthermore, there is no need to consider the regional differences of enterprises in actual practice. However, a transition period should be set from historical method to benchmark method for some progresses where big differences exist among enterprises.
Promoting green and low-carbon development of Qinghai province, is not only an urgent need for promoting ecological conservation and high-quality development of the Yellow River basin, but also the concrete embodiment of China’s efforts to address climate change. In the analysis of analyzing the relationship between energy consumption (energy consumption carbon emission) with GDP, this paper analyzed factor decomposition of changes in energy consumption and carbon emission from 2000 to 2019 in Qinghai province, based on decoupling index and log mean decomposition index (LMDI) decomposition model. Besides, some suggestions were put forward according to the above conclusions. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) Both the change of energy consumption and carbon emission were decoupled from economic growth, especially showing an increasingly bell-mouth phenomenon from the 13th five Year Plan, and the “bell-mouth” phenomenon is increasingly obvious; (2) Population and economic growth were the main drivers of energy consumption and carbon emission growth, among which the promoting effect of economic growth is gradually weakening; (3) The decline in energy intensity generally slowed down the growth of energy consumption and carbon emission, which was closely related to the change of energy intensity in the secondary industry; (4) The adjustment of energy structure, marked by a decrease in the share of coal consumption and a rise in the share of renewable energy consumption, had effectively curbed the growth of carbon emissions. After the problem of renewable energy consumption has been alleviated, the inhibiting effect has been continuously strengthened; (5) The effect of industrial restructuring on inhibiting energy consumption demand had been fully manifested, but it is necessary to further optimize the internal structure of the secondary industry, especially to reduce the energy consumption demand of traditional energy-intensive industries. Recommendations: (1) improve the efficiency of both coal and coal-fired power generation, especially in non-ferrous metal smelting, chemicals and non-metallic mineral products; (2) reduce the over-reliance on traditional energy-intensive industries such as non-ferrous metal smelting and chemical industry, and promote the integrated and coordinated development of traditional industries and strategic emerging industries; (3) make overall plans for local consumption of renewable energy and trans-provincial transmission, build a number of multi-energy complementary integrated optimization demonstration projects, and promote the intensive and efficient use of multi-energy storage of wind, light, water, fire and stored energy.
The material donation project is an essential component of China’s South-South Cooperation on climate change. The project has made steady progress with considerable impact since 2011. After the establishment of China International Development Cooperation Agency, more specific requirements were put forward in the supervision and evaluation of foreign aid projects, but the research on related theories and methods is still in its infancy and is not yet sufficient to support the practice effectively. Based on the requirements of China’s foreign aid transformation, combined with the retrospective analysis of the historical projects, this article proposes a systematic evaluation method suitable for processing unstructured project information, which constructs a three-level evaluation index system, including two perspectives of strategic policies and project implementations, and two evaluation dimensions of project performance and quality assessments. This method may also provide useful tools for project implementation, monitoring, feedback, impact enhancement and promotion. As of June 2020, China has conducted 40 public tenders for government procurement, provided over 500 million CNY materials to respond to climate change, so as to support the implementation of MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) on donated materials for South-South climate change Cooperation signed with 29 partner countries. The project has produced tangible results by supporting the implementation of national diplomatic strategies and policies, demonstrating international responsibilities, assisting partner countries to address climate change and achieve SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), and promoting the building of a community with a shared future for humankind. It has also enhanced the impact of China’s South-South Cooperation on climate change in the international community. Nevertheless, factors such as the prominent differentiation of projects, intricate sources of information and inadequate level of informatization, restrict the operability and convenience of the evaluation work, as well as the ability and efficiency of the evaluation outcome to serve the project supervision.
