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Mechanism of the summer rainfall interannual variability in transitional climate zone in East Asia: roles of teleconnection patterns and associated moisture processes

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Abstract

Transitional climate zone (TCZ) over East Asia is located between humid and arid regions, which is a highly sensitive and disaster-prone region especially under global climate change. Due to limited water resources, the atmospheric moisture availability has a dominant control on the precipitation variability. Hence, this study is motivated to reveal the key teleconnection patterns and associated moisture processes that govern the interannual variability of the summer precipitation over TCZ. In order to better diagnose moisture budget, the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART is employed for quantifying contribution from moisture sources. Above all, the observational analysis highlights two critical modes, one is Eurasian teleconnection (EU) and the other is Circumglobal Teleconnection (CGT). As regards EU pattern, positive EU phase corresponds to ample precipitation in TCZ. In the presence of positive phase, it underlines a “+-+-“ pattern of geopotential height anomalies stretching from western Europe to Mongolia plateau. In the context, the cyclonic flow and low pressure over Mongolia plateau act to enhance moisture flux from the west and the south and to prompt upward motions. Further moisture diagnoses illuminate largest increase of moisture uptake in monsoon dominated region, followed by the westerlies dominated region. However, the eventual contribution of summer monsoon is a little bit less than that of westerlies, due to the grand loss en route. In addition, the local evaporation exerts little impact. CGT propagates along the mid-latitude westerly jet, which is positively coupled with the precipitation in TCZ. Under the positive phase, there is an ascending motion over TCZ, which bears great resemblance to the EU case. However, unlike the result of moisture attribution in EU case, the southerly monsoon has the largest contribution followed by local effect, while the westerlies have little impact due to the cancellation of wetting and drying regimes along the pathway.

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Data availability

Japanese 55-year Reanalysis dataset (JRA-55) are derived from http://search.diasjp.net/en/dataset/JRA55. The FLEXPART model input data, NCEP–CFSR 6-hourly forecast data dataset, are available online (http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds093.0/). The daily observation precipitation data, provided by the National Meteorological Information Center of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) can be retrieved on https://data.cma.cn/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their continuous support which helped in improving the manuscript. FLEXPART_10.4 used for particle tracking and moisture analysis was provided freely (downloaded from https://www.flexpart.eu/wiki/FpRoadmap). All data sources are also duly acknowledged.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants Nos. 41875115, 41961144016, 42175041, 42230605 and 41831175, STEP (2019QZKK0102) and Key Deployment Project of Centre for Ocean Mega-Research of Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (COMS2019Q03).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment for Temperate East Asia, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Qiulin Wang & Lin Wang

  2. Hangzhou Meteorological Bureau, Hangzhou, 310051, China

    Qiulin Wang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Gang Huang

  4. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Gang Huang

  5. Carbon Neutrality Research Center, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Ting Wang

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  1. Qiulin Wang
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Contributions

QW: conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis; investigation; methodology; resources; software; visualization; writing—original draft. LW: conceptualization; formal analysis; funding acquisition; project administration; investigation; resources; supervision; writing—review and editing. GH: conceptualization; funding acquisition; resources; supervision; investigation; methodology; writing—review and editing. TW: data curation; validation; writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Lin Wang or Gang Huang.

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Wang, Q., Wang, L., Huang, G. et al. Mechanism of the summer rainfall interannual variability in transitional climate zone in East Asia: roles of teleconnection patterns and associated moisture processes. Clim Dyn 61, 1177–1192 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06618-1

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