Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Record-breaking flood over the Yangtze River in early summer 2020: role of the north Indian Ocean and north tropical Atlantic SST

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The Yangtze River valley (YRV) suffered an extreme flood in the early summer (June-July; JJ) 2020, contemporaneous with warm sea surface temperature (SST) over the north Indian Ocean (NIO) and the north tropical Atlantic (NTA) regions. It is suggested that the warm NIO condition played dominant role in the heavy rainfall in China. The present study confirmed the contribution of the NIO warming and examined the underly processes by conducting statistical analysis. There are two ways by which the NIO SSTAs can influence the flooding in JJ 2020 by reinforcing the anomalous western North Pacific anticyclone (WNPAC). One is through an anomalous Kelvin wave in lower level troposphere that propagates into western Pacific and induces suppressed convection. The other is through a reversed Walker circulation over the Indo-Pacific regions that causes divergent circulation in lower level troposphere around WNP. In addition, we show that the warm NTA SSTAs could also enhance WNPAC and YRV flood through an anomalous zonal vertical circulation, with anomalous ascending motion over the NTA region and anomalous descending motion over tropical central-eastern Pacific. The intensified WNPAC facilitated moisture flux transport to YRV through southwesterly anomalies and resulted in extreme flood over YRV in JJ 2020. This study suggests that the NIO and NTA SSTAs can cause extreme flood event in YRV independent of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which highlights the importance of considering SSTAs over the NIO and NTA regions when predicting extreme climate events in China besides ENSO.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Data that support the findings of this study are openly available online. The CMAP data are freely available at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cmap.html. The NECP-DOE reanalysis data are freely available at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html. The ERSST.v5b data are freely available at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v5.html.

Code availability

The codes used for the processing of data can be provided on request to the corresponding author.

References

Download references

Funding

This study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0600603) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42105063).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

All the authors contributed to conceptualize and design the study. Data were gathered by Xiaoxue Yin; an initial draft of the paper was prepared by Xiaoxue Yin; the article was repeatedly revised to generate the final version by Lian-Tong Zhou, Kui Liu, Yongqiu Han, and Zhaoyang Du.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lian-Tong Zhou.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

Not applicable.

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

All the authors consented to publish the paper.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yin, X., Zhou, LT., Liu, K. et al. Record-breaking flood over the Yangtze River in early summer 2020: role of the north Indian Ocean and north tropical Atlantic SST. Theor Appl Climatol 150, 1173–1186 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04217-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04217-y

Navigation