Sunshine Duration Change and Its Effect on Crops in Shihezi Region

Using the sunshine data from Shihezi meteorological station during 1961-2009,this paper analyzed the sunshine of annual and seasonal change trend by the linear fitting of least squares method.The results showed that,in last 49 years,the sunshine hours tended to increase generally in Shihezi region.The average annual sunshine duration increased nearly by 7 h in every 10 years.The inter-annual increase trend in each season was springsummerautumnwinter.The increase rate is the highest in spring with the rate of 18.5 h in every 10 years on average.Because cotton,beet,corns and oil plants are all thermophilic and light-favored crops,the change of sunshine duration has much influence on them.Based on the analysis between average yield of the four crops and its corresponding sunshine duration from April to November,we obtained the conclusions that the crop yield increased with the increasing sunshine hours,and set up the correlation model between average yield and sunshine duration.