VARIATIONS OF SEASONAL AND ANNUAL TEMPERATURES DURING 1470-1979 AD IN EASTERN CHINA

The ten-year anomalies of seasonal temperature were reconstructed on the basis of historical documents of cold events such as severe snowing and freezing of lakes and rivers. Assorted events were calibrated with the modern observations and translated to the temperature anomalies. The reconstructed temperature series show the predominance of cold climate in the first four hundred year of the period investigated. The centenary seasonal temperature anomalies for 16th to 19th century vary between -0.1℃ to -0.7℃. The cold decades concentrated in spring and winter seasons. The maximum of temperature anomaly (-2℃) observed in winter of 1840 s. The lowest annual anomalies occurred in 1650s and 1840s. The study shows irrefutable arguments of the occurrence of the Little Ice Age in between 1470s and 1890s in China, while the seasonal decade temperature lowered in maximum about 1.5℃ to 2.0℃ in comparing to the twenty century, and the variance increased to about 1.2℃ to 1.5℃.