Connections of Siberian snow onset dates to the following summer's monsoon conditions over Southeast Asia

Abstract

This is an exploratory study of possible links between the conditions of early season Eurasian snowfall and the following year's Southeast Asian summer monsoon. Forty years of historical records are used to examine the statistical connections between early season snow cover onset dates over northern Eurasia and the following year's summer monsoon over Southeast Asia. We found that the time of snow onset is significantly associated with warm season rainfall over Southeast Asia. The most persistent connection is between northeastern Siberian snow onsets and summer monsoon strength over India and northeastern China. This connection seems to be more clearly shown during the mature stage and monsoon withdrawal and is reflected in all three aspects of monsoon characteristics. In other words, the earlier snow cover onset (more snow cover during the early season) over northeastern Siberia, the more precipitation and moisture convergence, the higher prevalence of a southwesterly monsoon wind, and the later monsoon withdrawal over Southeast Asia. The revealed connection is likely through atmospheric circulation associated with early season land surface snow cover processes independent of ElÑino conditions. The authors suggest that more studies are needed to fully understand the circuitous connections between Eurasian snowfall and the Southeastern Asian monsoon.

Panigarh cave stalagmite evidence of climate change in the Indian Central Himalaya since AD 1256: Monsoon breaks and winter southern jet depressions

“…The cooler LIA would in all likelihood have increased the extent of snow in Asia during the winter, and may even have led to early snows in the region, both known to reduce the strength of the ISM (e.g. Bamzai and Shukla, 1999;Wu and Qian, 2003;Ye et al, 2005). In addition, the lower temperatures would have pushed the belt of westerly disturbances to the south, which may have played a role in the observed increase in winter precipitation in the foothills of the Himalayas and other uplands along the northern edge of the southerly sub-tropical jet stream.…”

Intercomparison of snowfall estimates derived from the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar and the ground-based weather radar network over Sweden

“…Snowfall further has far-reaching impacts via teleconnections. For example, the variability in Eurasian snow cover has been shown to influence Asian monsoon rainfall (Liu and Yanai, 2002), and changes in snow cover onset over Siberia have been reported to influence Southeast Asian monsoon rainfall (Ye et al, 2005). Other studies argue that the increased snowfall over the Himalayas leads to a reduction in Indian monsoon rainfall (Turner and Slingo, 2011), mainly due to increased reflection and cooling of the surface, leading to weakened land-sea thermal contrast, which is considered an important trigger for the strength of monsoonal circulation.…”

“…In a previous work Cao et al (2014) compared Cloud-Sat's snowfall detectability and estimation of snowfall rate over the contiguous Unites States to that of the snowfall estimate from the National Multi-Sensor Mosaic quantitative precipitation estimate (NMQ) (Zhang et al, 2011). The study found that CloudSat has good detectability for light snowfall but underestimates moderate and heavy snowfall, due to attenuation.…”

A New Generation of Satellite Snow Observations for Large Scale Earth System Studies

“…Another application of snow observations is to identify and evaluate the impact of snow cover on atmospheric circulation. This area of research has a long history as suggested by the number of review articles over the years (Walsh 1984;Cohen 1994;Barry 2002;Barry et al 2007), studies of the possible influence of snow on monsoon systems (Bamzai and Marx 2000;Bamzai and Shukla 1999;Barnett et al 1988;Dey and Kumar 1983;Hahn and Shukla 1976;Hawkins et al 2002;Kripalani et al 1996;Robock et al 2003;Sankar-Rao et al 1996;Ye and Bao 2001;Ye et al 2005), as well as other recent studies (Clark and Serreze 2000;Dery et al 2005;Elgundi et al 2005;Ge and Gong 2009;Grundstein et al 2005;Klingaman et al 2008;Ye 2000Ye , 2001. One fascinating and current branch of this field of study has identified the influence of north Asian autumn snow cover on the dominant pattern of winter, Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation (the AO or NAO).…”