Global Change and Regional Aridification

Some achievements on aridity trend from the accomplished project of the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China "Evolution of Life-Supporting Environment in China and the Predictive Study of Aridity Trend in Northern China,Grant No.G1999043400" and the ongoing project of the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China "Aridity Trend in Northern China and Human Adaptation,Grant No.2006CB400500" are summarized in this paper,which is related to the studies of drying trend on regional scale.The achievements focus on detecting drying trend in recent 100 years and studying its relationship with global change by scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences,and the mechanism causing drying trend on regional scale under global warming background is discussed finally.