Abstract
In 2022, South China suffered severe flooding due to unexpected persistent heavy rainfall in the pre-flood season. The in situ cumulative precipitation amount during May–June in South China broke the record established in 1981. The present study ascribed this record-breaking event to extreme warm sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the Northeast Pacific (NP) and the Maritime Continent (MC) region. In May, the NP warming associated with La Niña and the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation intensified extratropical diabatic heating and induced a cyclonic anomaly over Northeast Asia, which shifted the East Asian trough (EAT) southward. Subsequently, the westerly wind accelerated to the south of the anomalous EAT and strengthened the western North Pacific subtropical high, which led to increase in rainfall over South China. In June, the rainfall over South China remained above normal owing to anomalies of the meridional monsoon circulation manifested as a response to the development of a warm SSTA in the MC region. The anomalous warming in the deep tropics suppressed the Asian summer monsoon convection through anomalous atmospheric descent over South Asia, accompanied by enhanced atmospheric ascent and increased water vapor convergence over South China. Numerical sensitivity experiments validated the above processes and indicated that historic warm SSTAs in the NP and MC regions could increase the probability of extreme persistent above-normal pre-flood rainfall over South China. The results support improved predictability of pre-flood rainfall over South China on the interannual timescale outside the equatorial central–eastern Pacific.
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Data availability
The in situ rainfall records were obtained from http://data.cma.cn/en/?r=site/index. The JRA-55 reanalysis dataset was provided by DIAS (http://search.diasjp.net/en/dataset/JRA55). The OISST records were downloaded from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/sea-surface-temperature-optimum-interpolation/v2.1/access/avhrr/. The PDO index was obtained from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/ersst/v5/index/ersst.v5.pdo.dat.
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Funding
This work was jointly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 41830969, U2242205, and 42275024], Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Grant No. 2023B1515020009), Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (Grant No. 2020340), and S&T Development Fund of CAMS (Grant No. 2021KJ026).
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All authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. Material preparation, and data collection and analysis were performed by BL, KX, SM, ML, XH, and LH. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BL and CZ, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Liu, B., Zhu, C., Xu, K. et al. Record-breaking pre-flood rainfall over South China in 2022: role of historic warming over the Northeast Pacific and Maritime Continent. Clim Dyn 61, 3147–3163 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06734-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06734-6