Residents’ perception intensity on temperature, snow cover, glacier and phenophase changes is highly consistent with scientific research in Southeastern Tibetan Plateau. In residents’ opinion, climate change has not strong enough impacts on the agriculture system, and it does not affect crops’ growing and yields. However, they quite agree crop pests’ increasing slightly and crop growth period’s prolonging.  

Residents’ perception intensity on climate change shows a significant correlation with elevation on the whole, yet their perception intensity on climate change and its impacts is significantly correlated with their ages. Climate change has already forced residents to adjust industrial structure, develop water-saving agriculture economy, participate actively in the mountain tourism, and work in cities in order to adapt to climate change and make up for meager farm income. At the same time, they also expect the government provide them compensations and reliefs for the disasters (e.g. drought and late spring coldness). 

Local residents’ perceptions and attitudes on climate change are always ignored by the science research. The ignorance will cause the imbalance of social-ecological system. So the research on the residents’ perceptions and attitudes on climate change have important significance for balancing the social-ecological system and making policies on climate change, and also exploring the relationship of human being and natural environment. 

This research tries to explore residents’ perception and knowledge on local climate change and its impacts, and examines their ability for adapting to the climate change by detailed questionnaires on 202 farm households in the Mt. Yulong region, southeastern Tibetan Plateau. 

This research is financially supported by the Post-doctor Sciences Foundation of China (2013M530436), National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (41171053, 41121001) and the State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (SKLCS2011-04). This paper has been published on Advances in Climate Change Research, Vol. 9 No.3, May 2013. The abstract of the paper can be seen: http://www.climatechange.cn/CN/abstract/abstract9026.shtml#