Climatology of rainfall erosivity during 1961-2012 in Jiangsu Province, southeast China

Based on daily precipitation records at 52 meteorological stations in Jiangsu Province, southeast China, the space and time changes of characteristics in rainfall erosivity (RE) during 1961-2012 were analyzed. The meteorological and topographical diagnosis methods including Mann-Kendall trend test, Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD), and K-means cluster analysis (KCA) were used. The result showed that the average annual RE in Jiangsu was 8621.8 (MJ mm ha(-1) h(-1) a(-1)), and more than 50% of the annual RE was concentrated in summer. In contrast, the intra-annual distribution of RE in north Jiangsu presented higher concentration. There was an obvious seasonal difference in temporal trends of RE at the scale of station, and most of stations were characterized by increasing RE in winter and summer. Especially all the stations were dominated by significantly increasing RE in winter. By using KCA, Jiangsu could be divided into three sub-regions with different temporal variations in annual RE such as northern, central and southern area, and the southern area was dominated by a significant increasing tendency. Furthermore, EEMD for regional series of annual RE indicated that a 2.5-2.6 year periodical feature was noticeable in each sub-region.