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Impacts of Pacific Ocean SST on the interdecadal variations of tropical Asian summer monsoon onset: new eastward-propagating mechanisms

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Abstract

Understanding the variability and mechanisms of monsoon onset is extremely prominent for water management and rain-fed agriculture. Previous studies have shown a significant interdecadal advance in Asian summer monsoon (ASM) onset after the late-1990s and attributed it to the sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) in the tropical Pacific. However, the westward-propagating mechanisms revealed by previous studies (Walker circulation, equatorial Rossby wave response) are gradually decaying westward, which cannot explain the observational facts of stronger low-level winds over the Arabian Sea than the South China Sea. Based on longer datasets and multiple methods, this study reveals the influences of Pacific SST on the interdecadal changes of ASM onset through two eastward-propagating mechanisms: the equatorial Kelvin wave response to the SSTA in the equatorial central Pacific, and the extratropical Rossby wave train associated with SSTA in the subtropical North Pacific. These two eastward-propagating mechanisms mainly modulate the ASM onset via altering the meridional temperature gradient, which is more evident over the Arabian Sea and is more consistent with the observations. Special attention has been paid to the generation and maintenance of the extratropical Rossby wave train, which is less understood compared to the other mechanisms. This Rossby wave train can be excited by the upper-level divergence associated with the warm SSTA in the subtropical North Pacific. In addition, it can effectively gain available potential energy and kinetic energy from the basic flow, and exhibits strong positive interactions with the synoptic-scale eddies. This Rossby wave train is a newly recognized mechanism by which the extratropical Pacific SSTA influences the tropical ASM.

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Data availability

The Japanese 55 years (JRA-55) reanalysis data is available from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds628.0/. The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) data is available from http://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.gpcp.html. The Precipitation Reconstruction (PREC) data is available from https://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.prec.html. The Hadley Centre Global Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature (HadISST) data is available from http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst.

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Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions, which had led to a significant improvement of the manuscript. This study was supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 42230605, 41961144016, and 42205021), the Special Research Assistant Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M693134). Peng Hu thanks Suqin Zhang, Zhiang Xie, Xian Wu, Xiaodan Chen, Baosheng Li, and Jiapeng Miao for helpful discussions.

Funding

This study was supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 42230605, 41961144,016, and 42205021), the Special Research Assistant Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M693134).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yunnan Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disasters and Climate Resources in the Greater Mekong Subregion, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Peng Hu & Wen Chen

  2. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650500, China

    Peng Hu & Wen Chen

  3. Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Shangfeng Chen, Lin Wang & Yuyun Liu

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Shangfeng Chen & Lin Wang

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  1. Peng Hu
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PH and WC designed the research. PH and SC performed the analysis. PH, WC and SC wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wen Chen.

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Hu, P., Chen, W., Chen, S. et al. Impacts of Pacific Ocean SST on the interdecadal variations of tropical Asian summer monsoon onset: new eastward-propagating mechanisms. Clim Dyn 61, 4733–4748 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06824-5

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