Abstract
This study investigates the occurrence of tropopause folding (TF) events to the northeast of Tibetan Plateau (NETP) (TF–NETP) in boreal summer. Firstly, it is revealed that, TF–NETP occurrence in summer, always corresponds to a significant dipole rainfall anomaly pattern over China, with negative rainfall anomalies over the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys, and positive rainfall anomalies over eastern China. Secondly, the South Asian High (SAH) center over Tibetan Plateau (TP) is found to be anomalously stronger when frequency of TF–NETP events is relatively higher. Further diagnosis indicates that, the TF–NETP occurrence is related to an eastward propagating Rossby wave train (RWT) that originates from a barotropic low anomaly center over the northeastern Atlantic (NEA) about one–week before. The RWT propagates downstream via Western Europe, the west of Baikal and down to East Asia along the mid-latitude westerlies, and is connected to a high anomaly center over the north rim of TP, which enhances the SAH center over TP. The enhanced SAH in turn favors the southward and downward PV intrusion and the subsequent occurrence of TF–NETP. Furthermore, the low anomaly center that initiates the RWT is related to dynamical forcing of transient eddy activity over the NEA, which induces the low via eddy-forced upper divergence and its pumping. Finally, such local and remote processes are confirmed in a typical TF–NETP case. The ERA-Interim daily fields during 1979–2018 is used.
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Data availability
The ERA–interim reanalysis dataset can be accessed from the website http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim–full–daily/levtype=sfc/. The CPC precipitation dataset can be accessed from the website https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.cpc.globalprecip.html.
Code availability
All the codes are programmed by NCAR Command Language (NCL, version 6.6). The codes are available and maintained by Chuandong Zhu (zcd@lasg.iap.ac.cn).
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Acknowledgements
This work was jointly supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program [Grant no. XDA17010105] of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant nos. 42105039, 91837311, 42075052]. We appreciate the constructive comments and suggestions from the anonymous reviewer and thank the corresponding editor for his (her) time and effort.
Funding
This work was funded by the Strategic Priority Research Program [Grant no. XDA17010105] of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant nos. 42105039, 91837311, 42075052].
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Conceptualization: CDZ and RCR; methodology, CDZ and RCR; software, CDZ; formal analysis, CDZ and RCR; investigation, CDZ and RCR; resources, CDZ; writing-original draft preparation, CDZ; writing-review and editing, RCR; visualization, CDZ; supervision, RCR. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zhu, C., Ren, R. Tropopause folding events to the northeast of Tibetan Plateau in boreal summer and their remote relation to the circulation anomalies over northeastern Atlantic. Clim Dyn 59, 297–313 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-06130-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-06130-y