Detection of trends in precipitation during 1960–2008 in Jiangxi province, southeast China

Changes in precipitation exert an enormous impact on human life, and it is of vital importance to study regular patterns of meteorological and hydrological events. In order to explore the changing spatial and temporal patterns of precipitation amounts, precipitation extremes and precipitation concentration in Jiangxi province in southeast China between 1960 and 2008, several precipitation indices series were analysed using the Mann–Kendall test in this study. Our results indicate remarkable differences among the stations with negative and positive precipitation trends at the annual, seasonal and monthly scales, significant increasing trends are mainly found during January, August, winter and summer, while significant decreasing trends mostly are observed during October and autumn. For precipitation extremes, most precipitation indices suggest that both the intensity and the days of extreme precipitation are increasing; the mean precipitation amount, especially, on a wet day shows a significant positive trend. When it comes to precipitation concentration, the monthly rainfall heterogeneity shows an insignificant downward trend, while the contribution of the days with greatest rainfall displays an insignificant upward trend. Furthermore, the long-range persistence is detected for changing process of precipitation amount, extreme precipitation and precipitation concentration using the Rescaled Range Analysis.