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Bias of ENSO-like SST breaks the connection between the North Atlantic SST and Northeast China spring precipitation in the NCEP CFSv2

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Abstract

This study investigates the prediction bias of the relationship between northern tropical Atlantic (NTA) sea surface temperature (SST) and Northeast China spring precipitation (NECSP) based on the hindcast and forecast dataset initialized in February from the NCEP Climate Forecast System, Version 2 (CFSv2). In the observation, spring NTA SST warming excites a negative phase North Atlantic Oscillation-like (NAO-like) pattern, which further induces cyclonic anomalies over Northeast Asia and increases NECSP through a Eurasian midlatitude wave train. The CFSv2 prediction generally captures the negative NAO-like response to NTA SST warming but fails to reproduce the downstream Eurasian wave train, further resulting in weak atmospheric circulation anomalies over Northeast Asia. Therefore, CFSv2 cannot predict the NTA SST–NECSP relationship. The prediction bias in the NTA SST–NECSP relationship could be due to CFSv2 exaggerating the connection between the NTA SST and ENSO-like SST over the tropical Indo-Pacific because of its overestimation of the ENSO amplitude. The El Niño-like SST induces high pressure over midlatitude East Asia in both the observation and prediction. With the overestimated relationship between the NTA SST and tropical Indo-Pacific SSTs, the NTA SST warming-induced low pressure over Northeast Asia could be overwhelmed by the high pressure induced by El Niño-like SST. After excluding the influence of ENSO-like SST, the NTA SST-related anomalous circulation pattern over the North Atlantic–Eurasia region shows a high similarity between the observation and prediction. Furthermore, a hybrid dynamic–statistical prediction model is established based on CFSv2-predicted atmospheric circulations to improve NECSP prediction.

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Data availability

The data used in this study are freely available. The CFSv2 hindcast and forecast datasets are available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/climate-forecast-system/access. The GPCP precipitation dataset is downloaded from http://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.gpcp.html. The JRA-55 reanalysis dataset is available at https://search.diasjp.net/en/dataset/JRA55. The Hadley SST dataset is downloaded from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/data/download.html.

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Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41825010 and 42105018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nansen-Zhu International Research Center, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 9804, Beijing, 100029, China

    Mengqi Zhang & Jianqi Sun

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jianqi Sun

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  1. Mengqi Zhang
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  2. Jianqi Sun
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Contributions

JQ led this research. MQ performed all of the analysis, draw the figures, and led the draft of this manuscript. JQ provided constructive suggestions for improving the research and writing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianqi Sun.

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Zhang, M., Sun, J. Bias of ENSO-like SST breaks the connection between the North Atlantic SST and Northeast China spring precipitation in the NCEP CFSv2. Clim Dyn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07221-2

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