ORIGINAL PAPER Climate change affecting temperature and aridity zones: a case study in Eastern Inner Mongolia, China from 1960–2008 Jinwei Dong & Jiyuan Liu & Geli Zhang & Jeffrey B. Basara & Scott Greene & Xiangming Xiao Received: 19 July 2012 / Accepted: 16 November 2012 / Published online: 4 December 2012 # Springer-Verlag Wien 2012 Abstract Recent climate change is substantially affecting the spatial pattern of geographical zones, and the temporal and spatial inconsistency of climatic warming and drying patterns contributes to the complexity of the shifting of temperature and aridity zones. Eastern Inner Mongolia, China, located in the interface region of different biomes and ecogeographic zones, has experienced dramatic drying and warming over the past several decades. In this study, the annual accumulated temper- ature above 10 °C (AAT10) and the aridity index, two key indicators in geographical regionalization, are used to assess warming and drying processes and track the movements of temperature and aridity zones from 1960 to 2008. The results show a significant warming at the regional level from 1960 to 2008 with an AAT10 increase rate of 7.89 °C·d/year (p <0.001) in Eastern Inner Mongolia, while the drying trend was not significant during this period. Spatial heterogeneity of warming and drying distributions was also evident. Analysis of warming and drying via piecewise regression revealed two separate, specific trends between the first 31 years (1960–1990) and the subsequent 18 years (1991–2008). Generally, mild warming and very slight wetting occurred prior to 1990, while after 1991 both warming and drying were significant and enhanced. Continuous warming drove a northward shift of temperature zones from the 1960s to 2000s, while aridity zones displayed enhanced temporal and spatial variability. Climate change effects on temperature and aridity zones imply that the patterns of cropping systems, macro-ecosystems, and human land use modes are potentially undergoing migration and modification due to climate change. 1 Introduction Significant global warming occurred in the twentieth centu- ry and especially in the most recent decades. Global mean surface air temperature increased with a rate of 0.07 °C per decade from 1906 to 2005 (IPCC 2007), and a more dra- matic temperature increase occurred in the latter 50 years (0.13 °C per decade), while precipitation during this period was highly variable spatially and temporally (IPCC 2007), which also led to evident drying in some regions. In China, even greater changes in climate were observed, where the mean surface air temperature increased by over 0.2 °C per decade over the last 50 years and precipitation was extreme- ly variable. Pronounced warming and uneven precipitation in the northeast, south, and northwest regions of China brought different responses of evapotranspiration (ET), run- off, and soil moisture in the three regions (Piao et al. 2010; Ding et al. 2007). Unbalanced temperature and precipitation variation resulted in spatial heterogeneity of warming and drying patterns and processes. These substantially affects traditional geographical regions, such as agricultural zones (Qiu and Lu 1980; Qiu 1983, 1986, 1992), climatic zones (Wu et al. 2010), and life zones (Chen et al. 2003), as climate factors are key components in geographical regionalization. The eastern part of Inner Mongolia in China (Eastern Inner Mongolia) is located on the interface between the cold J. Dong (*) : X. Xiao Department of Microbiology and Plant Botany, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA e-mail: jinwei.dong@ou.edu J. Dong : J. Liu : G. Zhang Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China J. B. Basara School of Meteorology, Oklahoma Climatological Survey, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA S. Greene Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA Theor Appl Climatol (2013) 113:561–572 DOI 10.1007/s00704-012-0804-x