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Spatiotemporal characteristics of clear-air turbulence (CAT) potential in China during 1979–2020

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Abstract

Air turbulence, especially the clear-air turbulence (CAT), always affects flight safety. Based on six CAT diagnostics and ERA5 reanalysis data, the spatiotemporal characteristics of CAT potential in the middle and upper troposphere in China during 1979–2020 and the possible mechanisms are analyzed in this study. The results show that CAT occurs the most frequently in winter and spring at 250–300 and 200–225 hPa, respectively. In general, CAT occurs relatively less in summer and autumn. Moreover, the CAT potential decreases with altitude in each season, and the high-magnitude centers gradually move northward and eastward accompanied with a rising motion from winter to summer. During 1979–2020, the CAT potential shows clear increasing trends in most of China in winter, while decreasing trends in most regions in summer. In the “high CAT frequency region (HCFR, 75–135° E, 25–45° N)”, the CAT potential has been significantly increasing in winter and decreasing in summer. Mechanism analysis indicates that the spatiotemporal distribution of East Asian subtropical westerly jet is well correlated with the CAT potential in the HCFR, with the spatial (temporal) correlation coefficients greater than 0.75 (0.54). In addition, the geopotential height pattern in various regions, the zonal circulation in the Eurasia and Atlantic, the Polar Vortex, the Subtropical High, and the sea surface temperature all have significant impact on the CAT in the HCFR.

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Availability of data and material

The ERA5 dataset used in this work is available at: https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5. The CMA-NCC dataset used in this work is available at: http://cmdp.ncc-cma.net/Monitoring/cn_index_130.php.

Code availability

The analysis code is available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0606003) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41905045). We would like to express our gratitude to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the National Climate Center (NCC) of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) for providing the valuable research data. We also thank Meiyu Chen for her suggestion and feedback about the grammatical issues in this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Road, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Boyan Hu, Xuguang Sun & Jianping Tang

  2. East China Regional Air Traffic Management Bureau, Shanghai, 200335, China

    Boyan Hu

  3. Jiangsu Climate Center, Jiangsu Provincial Meteorological Bureau, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Pinhong Hui

  4. College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410003, China

    Jinfeng Ding

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  1. Boyan Hu
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  2. Pinhong Hui
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  3. Jinfeng Ding
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  4. Xuguang Sun
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  5. Jianping Tang
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Contributions

BH and JT contributed to the study conception and design, material preparation, and data collection. Analysis were performed by BH and PH. JD, XS, and JT helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BH and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianping Tang.

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Hu, B., Hui, P., Ding, J. et al. Spatiotemporal characteristics of clear-air turbulence (CAT) potential in China during 1979–2020. Clim Dyn 61, 2339–2353 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06684-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06684-z

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