Relationships between Temperature and Precipitation Forms Based on the Data from Meteorological Stations——A Case Study in the Kaidu River Basin

YAO Ya-nan;XU Jun-rong;GUO Ling-peng;SHANG Ming;LI Lan-hai;State Key Laboratory of desert and Oasis Ecology,Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography,Chinese Academy of Sciences;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences;Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Utilization in Arid Zones,Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography,Chinese Academy of Sciences;

rainfall frequency;;snowfall frequency;;rainfall;;snowfall;;temperature;;Kaidu River Basin

This paper analyzed the temporal-spatial distributions of different precipitation forms with temperature variation in the Kaidu River Basin and the ratio variation of precipitation's frequency and amount which corresponded to the same temperature range under different precipitation patterns. The results show that the amount and frequency of precipitation for the four stations in the basin basically presented a unimodal distribution with temperature variations. Temperature ranges for 95% of rainfall and snowfall occurrence were different. The results,based on the relationship between rainfall and altitude,indicated that as altitude increased and temperature decreased,rainfall frequency increased. The relationships between snowfall and altitude show that as altitude increased and the temperature decreased,snowfall frequency increased,but with decreased temperature,the amount of snowfall decreased. Ratio of rainfall to snowfall with temperature variations in the same temperature range shows that as the temperature raised,precipitation forms transformed gradually from snowfall into rainfall. The four stations have different critical temperature for the transformation from snowfall into rainfall.