The enhanced relationship between Southern China winter rainfall and warm pool ocean heat content

Abstract

A decadal change on relationship between winter rainfall over Southern China (SCWR) and Western Pacific warm pool heat content (WPHC) was detected by a sliding correlation analysis. The decadal turning point occurred around 1993. Before 1993, the relationship between SCWR and WPHC was quite weak with a correlation coefficient of −0.17. During this epoch, the WPHC‐related anomalous troposphere circulation, sea surface temperature (SSTA) and outgoing longwave radiation (OLRA) were mainly confined to the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the corresponding climate system anomalies cannot influence SCWR. However, after 1993, the relationship between SCWR and WPHC became significant and reached a correlation coefficient of −0.81. The troposphere circulation anomalies along with the SSTA and OLRA pattern that were associated with WPHC during this epoch significantly shifted northwestward and intensified, resulting in a direct impact on SCWR. A possible mechanism was put forth to explain the decadal enhanced relation between SCWR and WPHC. In the context of the increased and northwestward‐shifted climatological maximum WPHC, the concurrent intensified and northwestward‐shifted SST and atmospheric circulation anomaly pattern contributes to the decadal enhanced relation between SCWR and WPHC. On one hand, because of the increased and northwestward‐shifted maximum sea surface temperature, the convection became more sensitive to the SSTA over Indian Ocean and Maritime Continent, thus dragged the Philippines anticyclonic/cyclonic anomaly northwestward via Kevin wave and Rossby wave response, which can directly affect SCWR. On the other hand, the increased and northwestward‐shifted SSTA anchored the convection anomalies in South China Sea (SCS) and Maritime Continent, impacting the SCWR via anomalous descending/ascending motion of the anomalous local meridional cell.

Climatic Factors and Their Availability in Estimating Long‐Term Variations of Fine Particle Distributions Over East China

“…Figure d displays a positive correlation between the WPWPS and precipitation in the middle of East China, indicating that more rainfall is induced by enhanced WPWPS. These results indicate that the H500 responds significantly to increased WPWPS, and wet warm anticyclone airflow from the west in the South China Sea and dry cold airflow from northern regions converge on East China, often producing precipitation (He et al, ; Ren et al, ). Consequently, precipitation favors PM 2.5 scavenging over this region.…”

The Interdecadal Change of Relationship Between Summer Water Vapor Content Over Tibetan Plateau and Spring Sea Surface Temperature in Indian Ocean

“…Both of them may lead to the interdecadal differences in the mean state of summer circulation and precipitation in East Asia (Wu and Wang, 2002;Wang and Mehta, 2008;Zhang et al, 2011;Kajikawa and Wang, 2012;Feng and Li, 2013;Karori et al, 2013;Zhu et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015). Furthermore, the interdecadal changes of relationship between the Indo-Pacific SST and precipitation in South China are also explored (Wu et al, 2012;Ren et al, 2017b).…”

The influence of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation on North Central China precipitation during boreal autumn

“…Inter-decadal climate variability over China and other regions has received considerable attention during the past few decades (Minobe, 1997;Power et al, 1999;Gedalof and Smith, 2001;Deser et al, 2004;Zhou et al, 2009;Zhu et al, 2014;Ren et al, 2017;Zhu and Li, 2017). For example, many studies show that summer precipitation over eastern China, which is closely related to the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM), has experienced significant decadal variations since the 1960s, with a south-wet-and-north-dry pattern in the 1980s and 1990s, and inter-decadal changes since the 2000s (Ding et al, 2008;Wu et al, 2010;Zhu et al, 2011;Xu et al, 2015).…”