scholarly journals Response of Winter Moisture Circulation to the India–Burma Trough and Its Modulation by the South Asian Waveguide

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 1197-1210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuzhen Li ◽  
Yongqin David Chen ◽  
Wen Zhou

Abstract The response of moisture circulation to the daily evolution of the India–Burma Trough (IBT) and the modulation of disturbances along the South Asian waveguide are analyzed to seek a potential precursor of winter precipitation over south China. Daily observational precipitation and reanalysis data from ERA-Interim during 1979–2012 are employed. It is found that moisture circulation in response to the IBT is part of the zonally oriented wave trains along the South Asian waveguide, but it persists longer and migrates farther eastward than other lobes. Cyclonic moisture transport enhances the moisture supply to south China as a strong IBT develops, and shifts eastward abruptly after the peak of IBT with enhanced precipitation shifting from southwest to southeast China. This response is a joint effect of synoptic, intraseasonal, and interannual components that show similar wave train structures, whereas slight differences still occur. The synoptic component shows a shorter wavelength, more southerly path, faster phase speed, and group velocity, with the signal from the North Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal (BoB) in 6 days, implying that a disturbance over the North Atlantic is a potential precursor of winter precipitation over south China. The synoptic moisture convergence is more intensive than that at other scales upstream except over Southeast Asia, where all components are comparable. This might result from the constrained moisture source from BoB at the synoptic scale because of a short wavelength, while widespread sources from BoB–western North Pacific (WNP) at other scales as wavelengths are longer.

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (10) ◽  
pp. 4065-4081
Author(s):  
Xiuzhen Li ◽  
Zhiping Wen ◽  
Wan-Ru Huang

AbstractTwo extremely wet winters in 2015/16 and 2018/19 over Southeast China are compared in this study. South-to-north discrepancies appear in the spatial distribution of precipitation, with anomalous precipitation centered over the southeast coast in 2015/16 and the lower reaches of Yangtze River valley in 2018/19, respectively. Both instances of enhanced precipitation are ascribed mainly to warm and moist advection from the south, with transport in 2015/16 partly by a deepened India–Burma trough to the west, whereas with transport in 2018/19 mainly by a subtropical western North Pacific anticyclone (WNPAC). Both the India–Burma trough and WNPAC are maintained by the wave trains propagating along the South Asian jet, which are zonally offset by a quarter-wavelength. Further study of the wave train sources in 2015/16 and 2018/19 shows that they both tend to originate from extremely strong storm-track activity over the North Atlantic but have different displacement. The former is located more northeastward than the mean storm track and is modulated by a strong positive NAO, whereas the latter lies over the midlatitude central North Atlantic along with a circumglobal teleconnection. These differences further result in a quarter-wavelength offset in the Rossby wave source near the entrance of the South Asian jet by the convergence of upper-level divergent wind.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yana Li ◽  
Ho-Nam Cheung ◽  
Wen Zhou

During the period 1979–2019, the interannual variation of summer rainfall in Hong Kong (HK), located on the South China coast, is weakly correlated with tropical forcing, including the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Instead, HK summer rainfall is strongly correlated with the mid-latitude circulation over the Urals and the preceding spring sea surface temperature (SST) over the North Atlantic (SST-Atl). The above relationship is stronger in negative ENSO summers, where the SST-Atl anomaly tends to persist from spring to summer. The persistence of the warm SST-Atl anomaly is associated with a Rossby wave train propagating from the North Atlantic to East Asia, with a low over the Urals and a high over the high latitudes of Asia. Correspondingly, the upper-tropospheric westerly jet in East Asia becomes stronger and shifts southward toward South China. The enhanced westerly wind over South China is accompanied by an anomalous Philippine Sea anticyclone, which transports more water vapor to the South China coast and causes more rainfall in HK. On the other hand, during positive ENSO summers, HK summer rainfall is affected by variation in the subtropical westerly jet over South China, which is related to water vapor transport from the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. This is also associated with a height anomaly over northeastern China and the spring sub-polar North Atlantic SST. Therefore, it is important to investigate the impact of mid-latitude forcing on summer rainfall on the South China coast.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (24) ◽  
pp. 10523-10537
Author(s):  
Sijie Huang ◽  
Xiuzhen Li ◽  
Zhiping Wen

AbstractThe characteristics and possible energy sources of the South Asian jet wave train in winter are analyzed, with the intraseasonal signal emphasized. The wave train is equivalently barotropic and strongest in the upper troposphere, with its daily evolution dominated by the intraseasonal (10–30 day) time scale. Along the wave train, the propagation of disturbances from the North Atlantic to the western North Pacific takes around 8 days, which is much faster than the eastward migration of activity centers. The energy sources of the intraseasonal wave train are complicated and can be separated into three categories depending on the role of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). When NAO− precedes the wave train, it is northwest–southeast oriented. The energy is rooted in the lower troposphere over the high-latitude North Atlantic, and excites the Rossby wave source (RWS) over the western Mediterranean Sea via vortex stretching by abnormal divergence. When NAO+ precedes the wave train, it is southwest–northeast oriented. The energy rooted in the northeastern activity center excites RWS over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, disturbances from the western North Atlantic and southwestern activity center of NAO+ excite the RWS over the western Mediterranean Sea. Hence, both NAO− and NAO+ can excite the same wave train, but with different orientation and via different paths. Without the NAO, the wave train can also be stimulated by enhanced disturbances over the midlatitude central North Atlantic. The signal lies mainly in the middle-upper troposphere, which might be related to atmospheric internal dynamic processes, such as kinetic energy conversion from synoptic disturbances.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Jiménez-Guerrero ◽  
Nuno Ratola

AbstractThe atmospheric concentration of persistent organic pollutants (and of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAHs, in particular) is closely related to climate change and climatic fluctuations, which are likely to influence contaminant’s transport pathways and transfer processes. Predicting how climate variability alters PAHs concentrations in the atmosphere still poses an exceptional challenge. In this sense, the main objective of this contribution is to assess the relationship between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and the mean concentration of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP, the most studied PAH congener) in a domain covering Europe, with an emphasis on the effect of regional-scale processes. A numerical simulation for a present climate period of 30 years was performed using a regional chemistry transport model with a 25 km spatial resolution (horizontal), higher than those commonly applied. The results show an important seasonal behaviour, with a remarkable spatial pattern of difference between the north and the south of the domain. In winter, higher BaP ground levels are found during the NAO+ phase for the Mediterranean basin, while the spatial pattern of this feature (higher BaP levels during NAO+ phases) moves northwards in summer. These results show deviations up to and sometimes over 100% in the BaP mean concentrations, but statistically significant signals (p<0.1) of lower changes (20–40% variations in the signal) are found for the north of the domain in winter and for the south in summer.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priyanka Banerjee ◽  
Sreedharan Krishnakumari Satheesh ◽  
Krishnaswamy Krishna Moorthy

&lt;p&gt;Several studies have associated high dust years over South Asia to warming of the central or eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean (El Nino conditions) and the resulting weakening of the summer monsoon. Using satellite aerosol data for 2001-2018, we show that there has been a departure from this relation since the second decade of the 21st century with the North Atlantic Ocean emerging as a major driver of interannual variability of dust over South Asia. This change in relation coincides with the end of the global warming hiatus and a shift towards persistent positive phase of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Positive phase of the NAO induces cold phase of the spring/summer North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) tripole pattern. We show here that high dust activity during 2011-2018 is associated with positive SST anomaly over the mid-latitude North Atlantic and negative SST anomaly over the sub-tropical North Atlantic: the two southern arms of the SST tripole pattern. Interestingly, the relation between NAO and these two southern arms of the SST tripole has undergone changes in recent years, which has impacted the South Asian monsoon. The result is general drying over South Asia and an increase in the strength of the dust-carrying northwesterlies. Simulations with the Community Earth System Model (CESM) shows that SST tripole-like anomalies recorded during 2011-2018 over the North Atlantic can generate mid-latitude wave train that weakens the South Asian monsoon circulation, leads to surface high pressure anomalies and increase in dust emission and transport over northwest India and Pakistan. Most of the increase in the dust load can be attributed to enhanced transport at 800 hPa pressure level during May-June, which can lead to ~40-50% increase in dust concentrations at this level.&lt;/p&gt;


2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 1387-1414
Author(s):  
Dehai Luo ◽  
Yao Ge ◽  
Wenqi Zhang ◽  
Aiguo Dai

Abstract In this paper, reanalysis data are first analyzed to reveal that the individual negative (positive)-phase Pacific–North American pattern (PNA) or PNA− (PNA+) has a lifetime of 10–20 days, is characterized by strong (weak) westerly jet stream meanders, and exhibits clear wave train structures, whereas the PNA− with rapid retrogression tends to have longer lifetime and larger amplitude than the PNA+ with slow retrogression. In contrast, the wave train structure of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is less distinct, and the positive (negative)-phase NAO shows eastward (westward) movement around a higher latitude than the PNA. Moreover, it is found that the PNA wave train occurs under a larger background meridional potential vorticity gradient (PVy) over the North Pacific than that over the North Atlantic for the NAO. A unified nonlinear multiscale interaction (UNMI) model is then developed to explain why the PNA as a nonlinear wave packet has such characteristics and its large difference from the NAO. The model results reveal that the larger background PVy for the PNA (due to its location at lower latitudes) leads to its larger energy dispersion and weaker nonlinearity than the NAO, thus explaining why the PNA (NAO) is largely a linear (nonlinear) process with a strong (weak) wave train structure, though it is regarded as a nonlinear initial-value problem. The smaller PVy for the PNA− than for the PNA+ leads to lower energy dispersion and stronger nonlinearity for PNA−, which allows it to maintain larger amplitude and have a longer lifetime than the PNA+. Thus, the difference in the background PVy is responsible for the asymmetry between the two phases of PNA and the difference between the PNA and NAO.


2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (9) ◽  
pp. 1902-1912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josefina Moraes Arraut ◽  
Prakki Satyamurty

Abstract December–March climatologies of precipitation and vertically integrated water vapor transport were analyzed and compared to find the main paths by which moisture is fed to high-rainfall regions in the Southern Hemisphere in this season. The southern tropics (20°S–0°) exhibit high rainfall and receive ample moisture from the northern trades, except in the eastern Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. This interhemispheric flow is particularly important for Amazonian rainfall, establishing the North Atlantic as the main source of moisture for the forest during its main rainy season. In the subtropics the rainfall distribution is very heterogeneous. The meridional average of precipitation between 35° and 25°S is well modulated by the meridional water vapor transport through the 25°S latitude circle, being greater where this transport is from the north and smaller where it is from the south. In South America, to the east of the Andes, the moisture that fuels precipitation between 20° and 30°S comes from both the tropical South and North Atlantic Oceans whereas between 30° and 40°S it comes mostly from the North Atlantic after passing over the Amazonian rain forest. The meridional transport (across 25°S) curve exhibits a double peak over South America and the adjacent Atlantic, which is closely reproduced in the mean rainfall curve. This corresponds to two local maxima in the two-dimensional field of meridional transport: the moisture corridor from Amazonia into the continental subtropics and the moisture flow coming from the southern tropical Atlantic into the subtropical portion of the South Atlantic convergence zone. These two narrow pathways of intense moisture flow could be suitably called “aerial rivers.” Their longitudinal positions are well defined. The yearly deviations from climatology for moisture flow and rainfall correlate well (0.75) for the continental peak but not for the oceanic peak (0.23). The structure of two maxima is produced by the effect of transients in the time scale of days.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (16) ◽  
pp. 6046-6066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yalin Fan ◽  
Isaac M. Held ◽  
Shian-Jiann Lin ◽  
Xiaolan L. Wang

Abstract Surface wind (U10) and significant wave height (Hs) response to global warming are investigated using a coupled atmosphere–wave model by perturbing the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) with anomalies generated by the Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) coupled models that use the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4)/Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B) scenario late in the twenty-first century. Several consistent changes were observed across all four realizations for the seasonal means: robust increase of U10 and Hs in the Southern Ocean for both the austral summer and winter due to the poleward shift of the jet stream; a dipole pattern of the U10 and Hs with increases in the northeast sector and decreases at the midlatitude during boreal winter in the North Atlantic due to the more frequent occurrence of the positive phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO); and strong decrease of U10 and Hs in the tropical western Pacific Ocean during austral summer, which might be caused by the joint effect of the weakening of the Walker circulation and the large hurricane frequency decrease in the South Pacific. Changes of the 99th percentile U10 and Hs are twice as strong as changes in the seasonal means, and the maximum changes are mainly dominated by the changes in hurricanes. Robust strong decreases of U10 and Hs in the South Pacific are obtained because of the large hurricane frequency decrease, while the results in the Northern Hemisphere basins differ among the models. An additional sensitivity experiment suggests that the qualitative response of U10 and Hs is not affected by using SST anomalies only and maintaining the radiative forcing unchanged (using 1980 values), as in this study.


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