Abstract
Liaoning Province in China experienced an extremely severe drought event in July–August (midsummer) 2014. We investigated the features and related circulation anomalies of this drought event using observational data, NCEP/NCAR reanalysis datasets, and the NOAA extended reconstructed sea surface temperature dataset. Precipitation in Liaoning Province was very low in midsummer 2014, leading to the worst drought in the past 50 years. Water vapor diverged from Liaoning Province with a strong descending flow. Two factors facilitated this extreme drought event. The first was the teleconnections at mid- and high latitudes related to the East Asian–Pacific (EAP), Eurasian (EU), and Silk Road (SR) patterns. Rossby wave energy dispersed eastward along the EU pattern at high latitudes and along the SR pattern at mid-latitudes, reinforcing the centers of the geopotential height anomalies of the negative phase of EAP pattern. This resulted in the southward positioning of the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) and the weaker East Asian summer monsoon (EASM), leading to the drought event in Liaoning Province. The second factor affecting the drought event was anomalous thermal forcing over the northwestern Pacific, the Maritime Continental (MC) region, and the Indian Ocean. The sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) were positive in the equatorial Pacific and most of the Indian Ocean and presented a positive–negative–positive sandwich structure from the warm pool of the western Pacific at low latitudes to high latitudes to the north of the equatorial Pacific and to the west of 160 °W. Anomalous winds converged over the Indo-China Peninsula and the MC region from the southern equatorial Indian Ocean and the western Pacific in the lower troposphere and converged into the Bay of Bengal and the western Pacific from the Japanese archipelago and east of the Indonesian islands in the upper troposphere, building an anomalous descending flow over Liaoning Province.
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Availability of data and material
The NCEP/NCAR monthly reanalysis product and the extended reconstructed SST dataset are provided by NOAA, which are available free at their website (www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/). The daily rainfall data collected at 53 observational stations is provided by the Meteorological Information Center of Liaoning Province.
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The figures in this paper were prepared with GrADS and NCL software.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the NOAA and the Meteorological Information Center of Liaoning Province for providing the datasets.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program Subject (2018YFC1505601) and Joint Opening Fund of Key Project for Institute of Atmospheric Environment, China Meteorological Administration, Shenyang and Key Opening Laboratory for Northeast China Cold Vortex Research (2020SYIAEZD5).
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All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [Wei HUANG], [Liqiang CHEN], [Fenghua Sun], and [Zenghua YU]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [Min JIAO], and all the authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Jiao, M., Huang, W., Chen, L. et al. Causes of the extreme drought event in Liaoning Province, China in July–August 2014. Meteorol Atmos Phys 133, 1355–1365 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-021-00814-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-021-00814-0