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Impact of winter blocking on surface air temperature in East Asia: Ural versus Okhotsk blocking

Climate Dynamics volume 59, pages 2197–2212 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Atmospheric blockings and their impacts on wintertime surface air temperature in East Asia are investigated by using three blocking indices. Blockings in two specific regions that indirectly or directly modulate East Asian climate variability are analyzed: Ural (UR) blocking over East Asia’s northwest and Okhotsk (OK) blocking over East Asia’s northeast. Both lead to cold anomalies in East Asia but through slightly different mechanisms. In the typical case of UR blocking, cold air associated with a mid-level trough develops to the east of the quasi-stationary blocking and slowly moves southeastward as the Siberian high intensifies. Four days after the blocking onset, East Asia experiences significant cooling due to the temperature advection associated with anomalous temperature gradient and adiabatic cooling. During the typical OK blocking event, a preexisting cold anomaly over northern Eurasia is pushed southeastward by the westward expansion of the blocking. The anomalous meridional flow due to blocking-induced dipolar circulation over the North Pacific further reinforces the cold advection over East Asia, with a minor contribution of vertical processes. In both types of blocking, the cold anomaly persists even in the decaying phase, due to an offset between the temperature advection and the diabatic heating.

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Data availability

The JRA-55 (Japanese 55-year Reanalysis) data is obtained from the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) server (http://search.diasjp.net/en/dataset/JRA55).

Notes

  1. Note that the sign of \(Gr({i}^{*})\) in Eq. (3) of Dunn-Sigouin et al. (2013) should be positive.

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Funding

Jaeyoung Hwang and Seok-Woo Son were supported by the R&D Program for Oceans and Polar Regions of the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2020M1A5A1110579). Patrick Martineau was supported in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research JP19H05702 (on Innovative Areas 6102). David Barriopedro was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the JeDiS (RTI2018-096402-B-I00) project. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers, who provided constructive comments and helped improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea

    Jaeyoung Hwang & Seok-Woo Son

  2. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan

    Patrick Martineau

  3. Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Patrick Martineau

  4. Instituto de Geociencias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Universidad Complutense de Madrid (CSIC-UCM), Madrid, Spain

    David Barriopedro

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  1. Jaeyoung Hwang
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  2. Seok-Woo Son
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Correspondence to Seok-Woo Son.

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Hwang, J., Son, SW., Martineau, P. et al. Impact of winter blocking on surface air temperature in East Asia: Ural versus Okhotsk blocking. Clim Dyn 59, 2197–2212 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06204-5

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Keywords

  • Ural blocking
  • Okhotsk blocking
  • Surface air temperature
  • East Asia