The characteristics of moisture recycling and its impact on regional precipitation against the background of climate warming over Northwest China

Abstract From 1961 to 2015, annual and seasonal precipitation have shown a significant increase over Northwest China (NW). The change of precipitation is a combination result of the changing recycling precipitation (P w ) contributed by local evapotranspiration (ET) and changing precipitation contributed by advection moisture (P o ). In this paper, we calculated the ET based on the observation data of meteorological stations and the complementary relationship model. Then used an improved precipitation recycling model to analyse influential factors on the variation of precipitation over the NW from aspects of ET and advection moisture. The annual precipitation recycling ratio ( ρ ) fluctuates between 4% and 10% and shows an increasing trend at a rate of 0.3% /10a with a significance level of 0.01. ET, which is the internal supplier of the precipitable water, and advection moisture, which is the outside supplier of the precipitable water, both have displayed significantly increasing trends over the NW. The advection moisture contributes precipitation much more than ET, no matter in the annual scale or seasonal scales. In view of the spatial distribution, P w shows an increasing trend over the whole NW, but distinctly opposite spatial patterns of P o are found between the western area of NW (WNW) and the eastern area of NW (ENW). Such differences caused the precipitation is characterized by a wetting trend in WNW but a drying trend in ENW.