Abstract: Accumulated temperature is an important indicator of regional thermal resources and it deeply influences the growth of crops. As one of China's major grain-producing areas, Yangtze River basin should be closely studied, especially on its spatial and temporal variation of the heat resources for agricultural production.Based on the data of daily average temperature collected from 131 national meteorological stations in Yangtze River basin during the period from 1970 to 2013, the spatial and temporal variation of heat resources (≥10℃) was examined by the linear trend method, cumulative anomaly method, Mann-Kendall (M-K) Test and moving T-test. The results showed that: 1) The stations with earlier time of abrupt change were mainly located in the Midstream River area, the Jialing River basin, the Downstream River area and the Taihu Lake Basin, and the time of abrupt change appeared in 1997; abrupt change in the Minjiang River basin, Tuo River basin, Poyang Lake basin and Dongting Lake basin took place in 2001, the time of abrupt change in the Jinsha River basin was in 2002. 2) The starting date of the daily average temperature (≥10℃) advanced by -1.25, -1.39, -0.8 d/10 a, the ending date of the daily average temperature (≥10℃) delayed by 1.52, 1.43, 1.47 d/10 a, the duration days of the daily average temperature (≥10℃) prolonged by 2.97, 2.92, 4.62 d/10 a, and the accumulated temperature (≥10℃) increased by 113.5, 88.8, 77.3℃/10 a in the northern subtropics zone, mid-subtropical zone and Plateau climate zone, Yangtze River Basin. 3) The annual variations of the accumulated temperature (≥10℃) were differentiated by space. The stations with wider changing range were mainly located in the east side of the line of Hanzhong-Fengjie-Wufeng-Jishou-Wugang, and several individual stations were in the Sichuan Basin,Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and Qinghai Plateau.

Key words: the≥10℃ accumulated temperature, the linear trend, M-K test, abrupt change, the Yangtze River Basin