scholarly journals Increased Frequency of Summer Extreme Heat Waves over Texas Area Tied to the Amplification of Pacific Zonal SST Gradient

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (14) ◽  
pp. 5629-5647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaiqiang Deng ◽  
Mingfang Ting ◽  
Song Yang ◽  
Yaheng Tan
Keyword(s):  
Air Temperature ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Summer Precipitation ◽  
Extreme Heat ◽  
Vapor Flux ◽  
Sst Gradient

Abstract Summer extreme heat waves (EHWs) over the Texas area and their trend are investigated using observations and atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) output. There is a positive linear trend in Texas EHW days for the period 1979–2015. While the interannual variability of the Texas EHWs is linked to ENSO conditions, the upward trend in Texas EHWs is found to be significantly associated with the tropical Pacific zonal SST gradient (PZSSTG). The amplification of PZSSTG leads to both enhanced convection in the western Pacific and suppressed convection in the central-eastern Pacific (i.e., La Niña–like pattern), both of which can induce anomalous anticyclones over the Texas area through two distinct planetary wave trains in the antecedent spring. As a result, anomalously sinking motions and divergent water vapor flux appear over the Texas area, which reduce precipitation and increase downward solar radiation, leading to dry and hot soil that favors the occurrence of Texas summer EHWs. In addition, all AGCMs using observed SSTs as boundary conditions were able to simulate the observed decreasing trend in Texas summer precipitation and the observed increasing trend in Texas summer surface air temperature. The observed relationships between winter PZSSTG and the following spring–summer Texas precipitation/temperature were also reproduced by these models, where the intensified PZSSTG tended to reduce the Texas precipitation while increasing the surface air temperature.

scholarly journals Panama’s Current Climate Replicability in a Non-Hydrostatic Regional Climate Model Nested in an Atmospheric General Circulation Model

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1543
Author(s):  
Reinhardt Pinzón ◽  
Noriko N. Ishizaki ◽  
Hidetaka Sasaki ◽  
Tosiyuki Nakaegawa
Keyword(s):  
Regional Climate Model ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Horizontal Resolution ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Current Climate

To simulate the current climate, a 20-year integration of a non-hydrostatic regional climate model (NHRCM) with grid spacing of 5 and 2 km (NHRCM05 and NHRCM02, respectively) was nested within the AGCM. The three models did a similarly good job of simulating surface air temperature, and the spatial horizontal resolution did not affect these statistics. NHRCM02 did a good job of reproducing seasonal variations in surface air temperature. NHRCM05 overestimated annual mean precipitation in the western part of Panama and eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. NHRCM05 is responsible for this overestimation because it is not seen in MRI-AGCM. NHRCM02 simulated annual mean precipitation better than NHRCM05, probably due to a convection-permitting model without a convection scheme, such as the Kain and Fritsch scheme. Therefore, the finer horizontal resolution of NHRCM02 did a better job of replicating the current climatological mean geographical distributions and seasonal changes of surface air temperature and precipitation.

scholarly journals Quantifying the contribution of anthropogenic influence to the East Asian winter monsoon in 1960–2012

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (15) ◽  
pp. 9903-9911
Author(s):  
Xin Hao ◽  
Shengping He ◽  
Huijun Wang ◽  
Tingting Han
Keyword(s):  
Air Temperature ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
East Asian Winter Monsoon ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Winter Monsoon ◽  
Anthropogenic Influence ◽  
Anthropogenic Forcing ◽  
Asian Winter Monsoon

Abstract. The East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) is greatly influenced by many factors that can be classified as anthropogenic forcing and natural forcing. Here we explore the contribution of anthropogenic influence to the change in the EAWM over the past decades. Under all forcings observed during 1960–2013 (All-Hist run), the atmospheric general circulation model is able to reproduce the climatology and variability of the EAWM-related surface air temperature and 500 hPa geopotential height and shows a statistically significant decreasing EAWM intensity with a trend coefficient of ∼-0.04 yr−1, which is close to the observed trend. By contrast, the simulation, which is driven by the same forcing as the All-Hist run but with the anthropogenic contribution to them removed, shows no decreasing trend in the EAWM intensity. By comparing the simulations under two different forcing scenarios, we further reveal that the responses of the EAWM to the anthropogenic forcing include a rise of 0.6∘ in surface air temperature over East Asia as well as weakening of the East Asian trough, which may result from the poleward expansion and intensification of the East Asian jet forced by the change in temperature gradient in the troposphere. Additionally, compared with the simulation without anthropogenic forcing, the frequency of strong (weak) EAWM occurrence is reduced (increased) by 45 % (from 0 to 10/7). These results indicate that the weakening of the EAWM during 1960–2013 may be mainly attributed to the anthropogenic influence.

Improving predictions of surface air temperature anomalies over Japan by Selective Ensemble Mean technique

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. V. Ratnam ◽  
Takeshi Doi ◽  
Yushi Morioka ◽  
Pascal Oettli ◽  
Masami Nonaka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Temperature ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Correlation Coefficients ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Skill Score ◽  
Temperature Anomalies ◽  
Selective Ensemble ◽  
Ensemble Mean ◽  
Air Temperature Anomalies

AbstractSelective ensemble mean (SEM) technique is applied to the late spring and summer months (May to August) surface air temperature anomaly predictions of the Scale Interaction Experiment-Frontier Research Center for Global Change Version 2 (SINTEX-F2) coupled general circulation model over Japan. Using the Köppen-Geiger climatic classification we chose four regions over Japan for applying the SEM technique. The SINTEX-F2 ensemble members for the SEM are chosen based on the anomaly correlation coefficients (ACC) of the SINTEX-F2 predicted and observed surface air temperature anomalies. The SEM technique is applied to generate the forecasts of the surface air temperature anomalies for the period 1983 to 2018 using the selected members. Analysis shows the ACC skill score of the SEM prediction to be higher compared to the ACC skill score of predictions obtained by averaging all the 24 members of the SINTEX-F2 (ENSMEAN). The SEM predicted surface air temperature anomalies also have higher hit rate and lower false alarm rate compared to the ENSMEAN predicted anomalies over a range of temperature anomalies. The results indicate the SEM technique to be a simple and easy to apply method to improve the SINTEX-F2 predictions of surface air temperature anomalies over Japan. The better performance of the SEM in generating the surface air temperature anomalies can be partly attributed to realistic prediction of 850hPa geopotential height anomalies over Japan.

scholarly journals PDO-Related Wintertime Atmospheric Anomalies over the Midlatitude North Pacific: Local versus Remote SST Forcing

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (16) ◽  
pp. 6989-7010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingfeng Tao ◽  
Xiu-Qun Yang ◽  
Jiabei Fang ◽  
Xuguang Sun
Keyword(s):  
North Pacific ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Transient Eddy ◽  
Atmospheric Variability ◽  
Ridge Structure ◽  
Sst Gradient ◽  
Meridional Sst Gradient ◽  
Sst Anomalies

AbstractObserved wintertime atmospheric anomalies over the central North Pacific associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) are characterized by a cold/trough (warm/ridge) structure, that is, an anomalous equivalent barotropic low (high) over a negative (positive) sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly. While the midlatitude atmosphere has its own strong internal variabilities, to what degree local SST anomalies can affect the midlatitude atmospheric variability remains unclear. To identify such an impact, three atmospheric general circulation model experiments each having a 63-yr-long simulation are conducted. The control run forced by observed global SST reproduces well the observed PDO-related cold/trough (warm/ridge) structure. However, the removal of the midlatitude North Pacific SST variabilities in the first sensitivity run reduces the atmospheric response by roughly one-third. In the second sensitivity run in which large-scale North Pacific SST variabilities are mostly kept, but their frontal-scale meridional gradients are sharply smoothed, simulated PDO-related cold/trough (warm/ridge) anomalies are also reduced by nearly one-third. Dynamical diagnoses exhibit that such a reduction is primarily due to the weakened transient eddy activities that are induced by weakened meridional SST gradient anomalies, in which the transient eddy vorticity forcing plays a crucial role. Therefore, it is suggested that midlatitude North Pacific SST anomalies make a considerable (approximately one-third) contribution to the observed PDO-related cold/trough (warm/ridge) anomalies in which the frontal-scale meridional SST gradient (oceanic front) is a key player, although most of those atmospheric anomalies are determined by the SST variabilities outside of the midlatitude North Pacific.

scholarly journals Recent Surface Air Temperature Change over Mainland China Based on an Urbanization-Bias Adjusted Dataset

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (10) ◽  
pp. 2691-2705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kangmin Wen ◽  
Guoyu Ren ◽  
Jiao Li ◽  
Aiying Zhang ◽  
Yuyu Ren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Temperature ◽  
North China ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Data Series ◽  
Standard Procedures ◽  
Corrected Data ◽  
Warming Rate ◽  
Temperature Time

Abstract A dataset from 763 national Reference Climate and Basic Meteorological Stations (RCBMS) was used to analyze surface air temperature (SAT) change in mainland China. The monthly historical observational records had been adjusted for urbanization bias existing in the data series of size-varied urban stations, after they were corrected for data inhomogeneities mainly caused by relocation and instrumentation. The standard procedures for creating area-averaged temperature time series and for calculating linear trend were used. Analyses were made for annual and seasonal mean temperature. Annual mean SAT in mainland China as a whole rose by 1.24°C for the last 55 years, with a warming rate of 0.23°C decade−1. This was close to the warming of 1.09°C observed in global mean land SAT over the period 1951–2010. Compared to the SAT before correction, after-corrected data showed that the urbanization bias had caused an overestimate of the annual warming rate of more than 19.6% during 1961–2015. The winter, autumn, spring, and summer mean warming rates were 0.28°, 0.23°, 0.23°, and 0.15°C decade−1, respectively. The spatial patterns of the annual and seasonal mean SAT trends also exhibited an obvious difference from those of the previous analyses. The largest contrast was a weak warming area appearing in central parts of mainland China, which included a small part of southwestern North China, the northwestern Yangtze River, and the eastern part of Southwest China. The annual mean warming trends in Northeast and North China obviously decreased compared to the previous analyses, which caused a relatively more significant cooling in Northeast China after 1998 under the background of global warming slowdown.

scholarly journals The Role of Tropical Interbasin SST Gradients in Forcing Walker Circulation Trends

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 499-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Kristopher B. Karnauskas
Keyword(s):  
General Circulation ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Walker Circulation ◽  
Equatorial Pacific ◽  
Trade Winds ◽  
Low Level ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Indian Ocean Warming ◽  
Tropical Sea ◽  
Sst Gradient

The effects of externally forced tropical sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies on long-term Walker circulation changes are investigated through numerical atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) experiments. In response to the observed tropics-wide SST trend, which exhibits a prominent interbasin warming contrast (IBWC) with smaller warming in the Pacific than the Indian and Atlantic Oceans that includes a weak La Niña–like pattern in the equatorial Pacific, pronounced low-level easterly anomalies emerge over the equatorial Pacific. Through sensitivity experiments, the intensification of the Pacific trade winds (PTWs) is attributable to the IBWC, whereas the slightly enhanced zonal SST gradient within the equatorial Pacific plays a small role relative to the observed IBWC. It is further demonstrated that the greater Indian Ocean warming forces low-level easterly anomalies over the entire equatorial Pacific, while the greater tropical Atlantic warming-driven enhancement of PTWs is located over the central equatorial Pacific. In contrast to observations, a negligible IBWC emerges in the tropical SST trends of CMIP5 historical simulations due to a strong El Niño–like warming in the tropical Pacific. Lacking the observed IBWC (and the observed enhancement of the zonal SST gradient within the equatorial Pacific), the PTWs in the CMIP5 ensemble can only weaken.

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