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Please Click Yearly Climate Info

In China, a vast land spanning many degrees of latitude with complicated terrain, climate varies radically. China has a variety of temperature and rainfall zones, including continental monsoon areas. In winter most areas become cold and dry, in summer hot and rainy. In Xinjiang Province, people have the saying, "we wear a leather coat in the morning and gauze at noon; eat watermelon around a fire."

Temperature Zones

Temperatures vary a great deal. Influenced by latitude and monsoon activities, in winter, an isotherm of zero degrees traverses the Huaihe River-Qinling Mountain-southeast Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Areas north of the isotherm have temperatures below zero degrees and south of it, above zero. Mohe Town in Heilongjiang Province can hit an average of 30 degrees centigrade below zero, while temperature in Hainan Province is above 20 degrees.

In summer, most of areas are above 20 centigrade, despite the high Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and other mountains such as Tianshan. Among these hot places, Turpan Basin in Xinjiang is the center for intense heat at 32 centigrade on average. There are also the famous 'Three Ovens' cities along the Yangtze River in summer: Chongqing, Wuhan, and Nanjing.

From north to south, there are five temperature zones and a plateau-climate zone: one cold-temperate zone, mid-temperate zone, warm-temperate zone, subtropical zone, tropical zone and a plateau climate zone.

Distributions are as follows:

Cold-temperate zone: north part of Heilongjiang Province and Inner Mongolia

Mid-temperate zone: Jilin, northern Xinjiang, and most of Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia

Warm-temperate zone: area of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Hebei Province.

Subtropical zone: South of isotherm of Qinling Mountain-Huaihe River, east of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
Tropical zone: Hainan province, southern Taiwan, Guangdong, and Yunnan Province
Plateau climate zone: Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Precipitation

Precipitation in China is basically regular each year. From the spatial angle, the distribution shows that the rainfall is increasing from southeast to northwest, because the eastern seashores are influenced more than inland areas by the summer monsoon. In the place with the most rainfall, Huoshaoliao in Taiwan, the average annual precipitation can reach over 6,000 mm!

The rainy seasons are mainly May to September. Thus rich rainfall sometimes creates floods and drought accounts for the dry air in winter. In some areas, especially in the dry northwest, changes in precipitation every year are greater than in the coastal area. This is caused by the advance and retreat of the irregular summer monsoon. Viewed spatially, South China, with its longer rainy season, has more rainfall than the North.

Based on precipitation, the area divides into four parts: wet area, semi-wet area, semi-dry area and dry area. The first two are distributed alongside the Qinling Mountain-Huaihe River division, the 800 mm annual precipitation line (isohyet), and are the dominant farming areas. The 400 mm annual isohyet lies along the Daxing'an Mountains-Great Wall-Gangdisi Mountains, and divides the semi-wet and semi-dry areas. The last two areas support a very small population. Their boundary, the 200 mm annual isohyet, is approximately via middle Inner Mongolia and the Helan and Qilian Mountains to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Monsoon

In summer, a southeast monsoon from the western Pacific Ocean and a southwest monsoon from the equatorial Indian Ocean blow onto the Chinese mainland. These monsoons are the main cause of rainfall.

Starting in April and May, the summer rainy season monsoons hit the southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan. In June, the rains blow northward, and South China gets more rainfall with the poetic name, plum-rain weather, since this is the moment when plums mellow. North China greets its rainy season in July and August, says farewell in September; gradually in October the summer monsoons retreat from Chinese land.

Eastern China experiences many climate changes, while the northwest area is a non-monsoon region.