The Local Climate Zone (LCZ) system provides a standardized framework for intra-urban heat island studies. Yet the thermal contrast of air temperatures over different LCZs has not been examined at a large scale. Using ground-based meteorological observations in 2016, here we investigated the thermal behaviors of various LCZs over China. Measured temperatures over studied LCZs are found to have strong relations with latitude, altitude, and the distance to coastline. Thermal contrasts reduce to less than 1 ℃ in all seasons after removing the signal of background mean temperature determined by geographical conditions. The warmth of urban LCZs is more evident at night, with an annual mean temperature difference of 0.51 ℃ compared to the low-plant rural LCZ. Despite the temperature variation within individual LCZs, derived standard thermal contrasts are insensitive to changes in geographical conditions. Results reveal that consistent characteristic temperature regimes of LCZs exist at the continental scale.