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Factors controlling northward and north-eastward moving tropical cyclones near the coast of East Asia

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Abstract

The impacts of multi-time-scale flows on northward and north-eastward moving tropical cyclones (TCs) near the east coast of China in August and September are investigated using reanalysis data from 1982 to 2012. TCs of interest are under the influence of the subtropical high-pressure system in the western North Pacific (WNP). In August when the subtropical high-pressure system is strong and close to the coast line, most TCs in the region move northward, while more TCs move north-eastward in September when the subtropical high-pressure system retreats to the east.

To investigate the influence from different time-scales, the environmental flow is divided into four components, the synoptic flow, the intraseasonal flow, the interannual flow and the climatological background field. Analysis of steering flows between 25°N and 30°N indicates that the meridional steering vectors from all time-scales point to the north, dominated by the intraseasonal component. The deciding factor on whether a TC moves to the north or north-east between 25°N and 30°N is the zonal steering vector. For the northward moving group, the sum of the zonal steering from all time-scales is very small. On the other hand, the north-east moving group has a net eastward zonal component mainly contributed by the climatological mean flow.

Several individual cases that stood out from the majority of the group are analyzed. For those cases, the intraseasonal flow plays an important role in affecting the movement of the TCs mainly through the wave train, in which a cyclonic circulation is located to the north-west (north) and an anticyclonic circulation to the south-east (east) of TCs. The analysis of the steering vectors indicates the importance of all components with different time-scales to the movement of TCs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was jointly supported by National Key R&D Program of China (Grant Nos. 2018YFC1505800 and 2015CB453200), NOAA (No. NA18OAR4310298), National Science Foundation (No. AGS-1643297), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41630423 and 41875069), and NRL (Grant No. N00173-16-1-G906) and China Scholarship Council (Grant No. N201908320496). This is SOEST contribution number 10834, IPRC contribution number 1409 and ESMC number 285.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Qiao Liu, Weican Zhou & Tim Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Qiao Liu, Weican Zhou & Tim Li

  3. Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Change, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Qiao Liu, Weican Zhou & Tim Li

  4. University of Colorado at Colorado Spring, Colorado Spring, CO, 80918, USA

    Melinda Peng

  5. International Pacific Research Center and Department of Atmospheric Sciences, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Tim Li

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  1. Qiao Liu
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  2. Weican Zhou
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  3. Melinda Peng
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  4. Tim Li
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Correspondence to Tim Li.

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Liu, Q., Zhou, W., Peng, M. et al. Factors controlling northward and north-eastward moving tropical cyclones near the coast of East Asia. Front. Earth Sci. 13, 778–790 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-019-0797-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-019-0797-1

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