Decreasing trend of sunshine hours and related driving forces in Southwestern China

Total hours of sunshine are one of the most important factors affecting climate and environment, and its long-term variation is of much concern in climate studies. Trends of temporal and spatial patterns in sunshine hours and related climatic factors over southwestern China are evaluated for the period 1961–2009 based on data from 111 standard meteorological stations. The results showed that southwestern China is experiencing a statistical decrease of sunshine hours, at the rate of 31.9 h/10a during 1961–2009. The decline was particularly strong in summer, whereas it is nonsignificant in winter. Spatially, statistically significant decreases of sunshine hours mainly occurred in lower altitude regions, especially in the Sichuan basin and Guizhou plateau. Sunshine hours have a high correlation with wind speed, relative humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, surface downwards solar radiation flux, and cloud water content, with wind speed showing the strongest relationship to sunshine hours, implicit in the close correlation (temporally and spatially) between the two variables. Changing water vapor and cloud cover influence sunshine hours in southwestern China. In addition, the increased surface downwards solar radiation flux also made some contribution to a rise of sunshine hours during 1991–2009. The larger decreasing trends of sunshine hours at urban stations than rural stations may reflect the effect of urbanization on sunshine hours. Variations are dominated by the comprehensive functions of multiple factors owing to the complex nature of effects on sunshine hours.