*2.3. Contemporary Periods*

Over more recent times, the papers in this Special Issue focus on weather-related phenomena which significantly a ffect human societies. The non-linear dynamics of those phenomena are also highlighted. The associated findings can help human societies to mitigate the adverse impacts of weather extremes better. Xiang et al. [6] base their paper on summer precipitation data and 130 circulation indexes of 34 national meteorological stations in Chongqing spanning 1961–2010, together with the decision tree and the stochastic forest algorithm, to build a new multi-factor model for summer precipitation in Chongqing. Moreover, the model is tested with precipitation data from 2011–2018. Results show that the new model outperforms previous single-factor models.

Zhou et al. [7] use temperature data over 1980–2012 together with the Correlation Dimension method to analyze the temperature dynamics in the Yangtze River Delta in China. They find that the temperature rose by 1.53 ◦C over this period and the temperature rose the fastest in densely populated urban areas. However, the temperature dynamics were more complicated in the sparsely populated areas when compared to densely populated urban areas. Moreover, the complexity of temperature dynamics increased along with the increase in temporal scale. Lastly, the interaction between economic activity and urban density had the most substantial influence on temperature.

Yuan et al. [8] investigate the coupling between soil moisture and air temperature over China spanning from 1980–2013 using an energy-based diagnostic process. They show that the soil moisture–temperature coupling is the highest in the transition zones between wet and dry climates (e.g., north-eastern China and part of the Tibetan Plateau). Furthermore, the coupling is stronger in spring, and varies greatly in di fferent seasons over di fferent climatic zones. The heatwaves of 2009 in North China and 2013 in Southeast China further reveal that regions having low soil moisture may enhance heat anomalies, which further strengthens the coupling between soil moisture and temperature.
