Extreme Strong Winds over China: Spatial–Temporal Variations and Driving Factors

Abstract Extreme strong winds (ESWs) can pose a threat to human safety, influence air quality, and affect wind power generation, thus necessitating an urgent exploration of the long-term variations in ESWs under global warming. However, compared with studies focused on the mean surface wind speed, studies focused on ESW variations in China remain limited. Here, our results revealed that from 1970 to 2017, ESWs across China exhibited a significant decreasing trend during both the warm and cold seasons, with values of −0.96% and −1.05% per decade, respectively. Furthermore, via the use of the weather regime (WR) classification method, the contributions of dynamic (atmospheric circulation) and thermodynamic factors (factors other than atmospheric circulation, such as radiation changes resulting from human activity) were quantified. Atmospheric circulation contributed negligibly to the long-term declining trend in ESWs. Instead, thermodynamic factors were the dominant drivers, accounting for 93.9% and 94.6% of the declines observed during the warm and cold seasons, respectively. These findings indicate that the anthropogenic effects on ESWs should be explored further. Significance Statement Most existing studies on the surface wind speed have mainly focused on mean value changes, but the changes in extreme strong winds (ESWs) in China and their underlying causes remain unclear. The change in the wind speed is influenced by both atmospheric circulation and thermodynamic factors. The aim of this study was to explore changes in ESWs across China and to quantify the contributions of the above two factors to the long-term trends in ESWs. The results indicated that ESWs across China significantly decreased during both the warm and cold seasons and that thermodynamic factors dominated the decreasing trend in ESWs, accounting for more than 90% of the annual trend. This finding indicates that the anthropogenic effect on ESWs requires further exploration.