Abstract
The northernmost area influenced by the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is named the EASM northern marginal zone (ENMZ). The ENMZ is an important area lying in northern and northeastern China with scarce precipitation and a vulnerable environment. However, the existing monsoon indices have weaknesses in characterizing the ENMZ precipitation variability, which limits our ability to understand and forecast local climate changes. In this study, a new index, named the ENMZ index (ENMZI), is proposed to represent the variability in ENMZ summer precipitation. The ENMZI is defined by the meridional shear of 200-hPa zonal wind anomalies, expressing the meridional displacement of the East Asian jet and the trough anomaly over Lake Baikal. The ENMZI serves as a regional monsoon index complementing the existing monsoon indices and representing the variabilities in the EASM northward advance and rainfall over northern and northeastern China. The higher the ENMZI is, the higher latitude the EASM reaches, and the more rainfall the ENMZ has. The physical mechanism for the ENMZI representing the ENMZ precipitation variability is explicated by anomalous vorticity and temperature advection associated with the ENMZI and positive feedback between vertical motion and diabatic heating anomalies. The variability of ENMZI is jointly modulated by variabilities in air–sea coupling modes from the North Atlantic, tropical Pacific, and North Indian Ocean and in atmospheric wave trains over Eurasia. Thus, the ENMZI can be a reliable benchmark for studies in climatically sensitive areas in northern and northeastern China.
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Data availability
Data analyzed in this study are a reanalysis of existing data, which are openly available at the following websites: http://data.cma.cn/, https://www.uea.ac.uk/web/groups-and-centres/climatic-research-unit/data, https://spei.csic.es/, https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5, https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html, https://jra.kishou.go.jp/index.html.
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This study was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 42205059), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant numbers XDB40010302 and XDA23090303), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 42071026 and U1803245).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Congxi Fang, Yu Liu and Huiming Song. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Congxi Fang and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Fang, C., Liu, Y., Song, H. et al. A new monsoon circulation index defining precipitation variability in the East Asian summer monsoon northern marginal zone. Theor Appl Climatol 155, 3811–3830 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04850-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04850-9