Abstract
This study focuses on regional extreme precipitation (REP) in North China. We found a trend turning in summer (July to August) REP frequencies and intensities from a decrease trend in 1961–2002 to an increase trend in 2003–2020, accompanied by a southward shift of the extreme rain belt, and an enhanced connection with the Ural blocking (UB) and the Western Pacific Subtropical High Pressure (WPSH) in 2003–2020. Rains in North China are accompanied by a west–east low–high dipole at upper troposphere. During the REP, the high of the low–high dipole at Northeast China (the NEH) is strongly amplified from a pre-existing stationary ridge over northeast Asia under the influence of eastward propagating Rossby wave energies along the subpolar/subtropical wave guide over Eurasia. For the REP years, an enhanced stationary ridge over the Ural Mountains in the period 2003–2020 replaces the stationary Ural trough in the period 1961–2002, favouring the development of the UB and leading to a change of the Rossby wave propagation path from along the subtropical waveguide in 1961–2002 to along the polar wave guide in 2003–2020. Therefore, a connection between the NEH and the UB forms, which may lead to a higher probability of extreme precipitation in North China since blocking is a major source of strong circulation anomalies. The mean summer WPSH expands more westward-northward in 2003–2020 than in 1961–2002, which provides a background conditions for a further westward-northward expanding of the daily WPSH under the influence of the NEH leading to a strong moisture transport from north Pacific. As a result, the intensity and probability of extreme precipitation over southern North China increase.
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Station-based observations of daily precipitation over the 107 stations in North China region (the 34.5°–44° N, 110°–123° E) from China's surface climate data set (V3.0) were provided by the National Meteorological Information Center of China Meteorological Administration (http://data.cma.cn/data/cdcdetail/dataCode/A.0012.0001.html), NCEP/NCAR datasets were obtained from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html; The monthly values of the ridge line indices and the western boundary indices from 1961 to 2020 are obtained from the National Climate Center (NCC) monitoring service (http://cmdp.ncc-cma.net/download/precipitation/diagnosis/NWP_high/wpsh_idx.txt).
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Acknowledgements
This work was jointly sponsored by the National Key Basic Research Project of China (Grant 2019YFA0607002), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Projects (42075025), National Science Founding of Shandong Province of China on Major Basic Research Program (ZR2019ZD12), Taishan Pandeng Scholar Project, the open fund of State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources (QNHX2217).
Funding
This work was jointly sponsored by the National Key Basic Research Project of China (Grant 2019YFA0607002), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Projects (42075025), National Science Founding of Shandong Province of China on Major Basic Research Program (ZR2019ZD12), Taishan Pandeng Scholar Project, the open fund of State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources (QNHX2217).
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YD, JG, and YZ contributed to the conceptualization and design of the study. Figures visualization and formal analysis were performed by JG and YD. The first draft of the manuscript was written by YD, and all authors reviewed and approved the manuscript.
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Diao, Y., Guo, J., Zhang, Y. et al. Trend turning of North China summer extreme precipitations around early 2000s and its possible reason. Clim Dyn 61, 5367–5386 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06860-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06860-1