Assessment of Climate Variability over East Asia-Korea for 2015/16 Winter

Abstract

This paper is to assess the state of climate over East Asia and Korea during 2015/ 16 winter. There was a distinct intraseasonal climate variation during the period: the recordbreaking warmth in December 2015 vs. strong cold surge outbreaks in January 2016. It is suggested that the anomalous warming in December 2015 was contributed by an intensification of Kuroshio anticyclone associated with 2015/16 El Niño and polar vortex intensification. In January 2016, a strong cold surge outbroke over East Asia bringing severe cold more than two weeks. The cold surge was a blocking-type one which followed extremely negative AO developed from early January. It was suggested that the intensification of cold surge might be contributed indirectly by a strong Arctic warming and MJO activity during the period.

Relating Moisture Transport to Stable Water Vapor Isotopic Variations of Ambient Wintertime along the Western Coast of Korea

“…This strong anticyclone pressure, which is centered over continental Asia, controls almost the entire region of Eurasia [28]. The winter weather in 2015/2016 appeared to be a strong cold wave which occurred in mid-January [20]. Meteorological data from our study period, which were recorded by an automatic weather station in the vicinity of the sampling location (approximately 10 km away from the sampling location at 37 • 28 39 N 126 • 37 29 E, about 70 m a.s.l.…”

“…In particular, the intensity of Siberian high pressure is closely related to the winter cold wave within the Korean peninsula. During the winter of 2015/2016, the effect of high-latitude climate variability was expected to have been complicated by a strongly developed El Niño and Arctic sea ice extent [20]. In the Korea peninsula, precipitation isotopic compositions alone were used to comprehend the characteristics of moisture [21,22].…”

Study on the classification and characteristics of cold surge in South Korea

“…In particular, the temperature decreases significantly when both patterns are in the negative phase. Several studies have shown that the weakening of the polar stratosphere circulation (Kim et al ., 2009) and the occurrence of the tropical Madden‐Julian oscillation (Park et al ., 2010b) are linked to cold surges (Jeong et al ., 2016).…”