Impact of Global Warming on Altitude Effect in China in the Past Half Century

The data set of 160 National Meteorological Observatory stations with long-term monthly temperature data for China has been analyzed in this study to discover the altitudinal variation of temperature gradients in China in the past half century. By altitudinal analysis, it is found that, with the global warming in the past half-century, the latitudinal temperature gradient steepens, with a larger magnitude in summer than in winter. Possible mechanisms are discussed in the end.