Modeling impacts of East Asian Ocean-Land thermal contrast on spring southwesterly winds and rainfall in eastern China

Using the National Centers for Environmental Prediction–National Center for Atmospheric Research （NCEP–NCAR） reanalysis dataset, the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center’s merged analysis of precipitation, and the MM5v3 Meso-scale Model, the impacts of surface temperature differences between the East Asian land and its adjacent oceans on spring southwesterly winds and rainfall over eastern China are studied. The modeling results show that the temperature differences exert strong influence on the occurrence of the southwesterly winds and rainfall over southern China and their northward advances. When surface temperature increases over the land and decreases over the oceans, the temperature gradient with a winter feature earlier changes toward the gradient with a summer feature. Both the low-pressure system east of the Tibetan Plateau and the subtropical high-pressure system over the western Pacific strengthen, accompanying with the strengthening of the lower-tropospheric southwesterly winds over eastern China. Accordingly, the upward motion increases over the Yangtze-Huaihe River （YHR） valleys and decreases over southern China, leading to an increase of spring rainfall over the YHR valleys and a decrease over southern China. Thus, the rain belt over eastern China appears over the YHR valleys but not over southern China. Under a weaker condition of the spring thermal contrast, the rain belt does not occur over eastern China. When the spring thermal contrast pronouncedly strengthens, the rain belt over southern China may advance northward into the YHR valleys during spring, though there is no onset of the tropical monsoon over the South China Sea. This forms a rain belt similar to that of the YHR valleys during the summer Meiyu period.     

Linkage between the dominant modes in Pacific subsurface ocean temperature and the two type ENSO events

We investigate the variations of subsurface ocean temperature(SOT) based on the monthly-Simple Ocean Data Assimilation(SODA) during 1958-2007,and discuss the linkage between the variations of SOT and the eastern and central Pacific ENSO(EP and CP-ENSO) events.The wavelet analyses suggest that the variation of the EP and CP-ENSO events shows the 2-7 and the 10-15 years oscillation in the tropical sea surface temperature(SST),and coupled with a zonal dipole mode and a tripole mode in the SOT anomalous field reveled by the singular value decomposition(SVD) analysis.During the mature phase of CP-ENSO,the positive center of SOT at the subsurface layer locates in the west of dateline,which results in the increase of SOT in the Ni o4 region and causes the CP-ENSO event.Statistical analysis implies that,the eastern and central Pacific subsurface indices which are defined by the expansion coefficients of the first and third SVD mode for SOT have shown the capabilities in disguising the EP and CP-ENSO events,respectively.In addition,corresponding to the increase of the SOT amplitude on the 10-15 years time scale,we found that the frequency and intensity of CP-El Ni o events has exhibited an upward trend after the 1980s,which suggests that the CP-ENSO event has shown an enhanced impact on the global climate in the past decades.     

How would global-mean temperature change in the 21st century?

The time series of HadCRUT3 global-mean surface air temperature (GSAT) anomaly, Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) index, and the equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) were utilized, and their long-term trends and multiple time-scale periodic oscillations were explored in this study. A long-term trend with a warming rate about 0.44°C /century during 1850–2008, two cool floors occurred respectively around 1910 and during 1950–1970, and three warm flats happened in the 1870s, 1940s and since the year 1998 were found in the GSAT. In this duration, the variability of GSAT can be well reconstructed by the quasi-21-year, the quasi-65-year, and century-scale oscillations. The recent decadal warm flat is caused by their positive phase overlapping from these three oscillations. The maximum rising temperature reached 0.26°C was simulated in 2004 by the three oscillations. The quasi-21-year and the quasi-65-year oscillations were possibly caused by solar radiation and internal variability of the ocean-atmosphere system. Therefore, an outlook of GSAT for the 21st century was made based on the long-term trend and these three oscillations. It was expected that a cool floor and a warm flat of the GSAT would appear in the 2030s and 2060s, respectively. However, the highest warming range is predicted about 0.6°C, it is less than the threshold 2°C and IPCC projection.     

Decadal change of the East Asian summer monsoon and its related surface temperature in Asia-Pacific during 1880–2004

The East Asian summer monsoon （EASM） and its related change of surface temperature in the past century were not clearly ad- dressed due to absence of atmospheric reanalysis data before 1948. On the benchmark of station-observed sea level pressure （SLP） in China, we utilized multiple SLP datasets and evaluated their qualities in measuring the SLP-based EASM index （EASMI）. It is found that the EASMI based on the SLP of the Hadley center version 2 （HadSLP2） has shown the best performance on the inter- annual and decadal time scales. Instead of showing a linear weakening trend pointed out by the previous study, the EASMI has likely exhibited the decadal variability, characterized by weakened trends during 1880-1906, 1921-1936, and 1960-2004, and with enhanced trends during 1906-1921 and 1936-1960, respectively. Corresponding to the weakened and enhanced periods of EASMI since the 1920s, the surface air temperature （SAT） index （SATI） averaged in eastern China has likely shown a warming and a cooling trend, respectively. However, the decadal abrupt transitions between the two indices do not occur concurrently, which results in a weak correlation between two indices on the decadal time scale. Further analysis indicates that there are four key regions where the SAT is significantly correlated with the EASMI, suggesting the joint impact of surface temperature in Asia-Pacific on the EASM during 1880-2004. In which, the decadal change of SAT near the Lake Baikal plays an important role in the linear trends of the EASM before and after 1960.