An Analysis of Climatic Jump

Abstract

Lorenz (1968, 1976) stated that regime transition in almost-intransitivity of nonlinear climatic system may play an important role in climatic change, and he suggested that climatic change associated with the transition may appear in interannual variabilities. Referring to Lorenz's suggestion, we will treat abrupt changes of time mean, designated as climatic jumps. A quantitative definition of jump and simple method of its detection are presented, noting that the time of jump appearance can be specified within a margin of several years. Some jumps are detected in time series of seasonal mean data of surface air temperature, sea level pressure, precipitation, sunshine duration and maximum depth of snow-cover averaged spatially over Japan. The fact that jumps appear commonly in various climatic elements around 1950 suggests an association of these jumps with some abrupt changes of the atmospheric general circulation.Concerning the cause of the jumps around 1950, we survey some change in external forcings. Big explosions of several volcanoes over the world occurred almost simultaneously with the jumps around 1950 after a pause of about 30 years. It is inadequate to assume that this volcanic activity would directly cause the jump in transitive system, because the possible climatic effect of volcanic eruption is mainly cooling and the jump of temperature is warming over Japan. However, further studies are needed for any definite conclusion on problem whether this reopening of volcanic activity would be a triggering action of the regime transition or not.

A 1° monthly gridded sea‐surface temperature dataset compiled from ICOADS from 1850 to 2002 and Northern Hemisphere frontal variability

“…Also, the SST changes for the 1940s regime shift exhibit the two action centres associated with the SAF and STF, though the STF change is weaker than the SAF change. The SST difference for the 1940s shift has larger amplitudes in the SAF, especially around Japan, consistent with SST analysis over the Pacific Ocean by Deser et al (2004) and air-temperature analysis in Japan by Yamamoto et al (1986).…”

“…The SAF and STF were the action centres of the SST warming associated with the climatic regime shift in the 1940s, as well as the cooling in the 1970s shift, consistent with the study by Nakamura et al (1997) for the 1970s shift. However, the SST change associated with the 1940s shift exhibits broader changes around the SAF than the 1970s shift and were centred in the region of Japan, consistent with the strong warming signal in air temperatures in Japan (Yamamoto et al, 1986).…”

Climatic Jumps in Precipitation and Extremes in Drying North China during 1954-2006

“…Drought conditions in the marginal monsoon zones may persist for a long time after a sharp decrease of rainfall (Demarée and Nicolis 1990;Yan et al 1992). The phenomenon that climate changes rapidly during a short period and then stays at a relatively stable level for long was called as ''climatic jump'' or ''regime shift'' (rapid transition from one to another climate state/regime), backed by the theories of complex dynamical systems (Yamamoto et al 1986;Demarée and Nicolis 1990;Ye and Yan 1990;Yasunaka and Hanawa 2002). The local physical feedbacks to maintain a drought climate were discussed by Charney (1975) for Sahel, and Fu and Yuan (2001) for China.…”

The 1976/77 Austral Summer Climate Transition Effects on the Atmospheric Circulation and Climate in Southern South America

“…The effects of the austral summer 1976/77 climate transition on the atmospheric circulation are first detected using Yamamoto's statistic test for interannual time series inhomogeneity (Yamamoto et al 1986). The formulation of the test is as follows.…”