The modern atmospheric observation and literatural historical drought-flood records were used to extract the inter-decadal signals of dry-wet modes in eastern China and reveal the possible relationship of global and China temperature changes associated with the East Asian summer monsoon advances.A climate pattern of "wet-north and dry-south" in eastern China and cool period in China and globe are associated with the strong summer monsoon that can advance further to the northernmost part in the East Asian monsoon region.On the contrary,a climate pattern of "dry-north and wet-south" in eastern China and a warm period in China and globe are associated with the weaker summer monsoon that only reaches the southern part in the region.An interdecadal oscillation with the timescale about 60 years was found dominating in both the dry-wet mode index series of the East Asian summer monsoon and the global temperature series after the secular climate states and long-term trend over inter-centennial timescales have been removed.
Yunnan Province of China suffered a record-breaking drought that persisted from autumn 2009 into spring 2010. The present study examined the physical causes of this extreme drought event in terms of persistent anomalies of intraseasonal oscillation in the tropical atmosphere （the Madden-Julian Oscillation hereafter the MJO）. The results show that the occurrence of severe drought in Yunnan was caused directly by deficient rainfall lasting from the summer of 2009 to the spring of 2010. Further ex- ploration reveals a persistent positive variation of MJO index 1 from June to October. Accordingly, the convective activity over the Bay of Bengal （BOB） weakened continuously, and then an anomalous descending airflow was induced over the tropi- cal Indian Ocean, resulted in the anomalous weakening of vertical Asian monsoon circulation in South Asia. Consequently, the transport of water vapor from the tropical Indian Ocean to Yunnan decreased abnormally, leading to persistent below-normai rainfall over Yunnan from summer to autumn in 2009. As a result, a severe drought began to appear in autumn. In the winter of 2009-2010, MJO index 1 remained persistently positive, indicating the continuous weakening of convective activity over the BOB. The atmospheric circulation associated with the persistent positive anomalies in the MJO also demonstrated anomalous patterns. Specifically, there was an anomalous high-pressure ridge stretching from South Asia through the Tibetan Plateau and into the western part of southwestem China. This indicates that the atmospheric circulation over Yunnan was dominated by vertical descending airflow in the high-pressure ridge. Simultaneously, the India-Burma trough was weakened, which resulted in unfavorable conditions for the transport of water vapor from the BOB to Yunnan, causing the observed persistent deficient precipitation in winter and the subsequently intensified drought. Therefore, the persistent anomalies in MJO activity in the tropical atmosphere played an important role in the oc
The dry-wet variability in western China and its spatiotemporal structure during the last 4-5 centuries was examined using 24 climate proxies from sediments, ice cores, historical documents, and tree rings. Spatial patterns and temporal evolutions of dryness and wetness were not only extracted from the proxy data using rotated empirical orthogonal function （REOF） analysis for the last 4 centuries, but also for instrumental data in the last 40 years. The leading five REOF modes indicate that 5 dry-wet variation centers exist in western China. Moreover, long-term variability in dryness and wetness is seen on long （centennial） to short （inter-decadal） timescales. An out-of-phase relationship for the inter-decadal variation was observed between the Hetao-upper Yangtze River region and north Xinjiang, indicating influences on dry-wet variations of the East Asian summer monsoon and the westerly winds over the two regions, respectively. A particularly long dry spell was found in the central Tibetan Plateau in the 19th century. A predominance of wet decades in the last 4 centuries was found in the arid and Hetao regions. Three regional dry-wet series with annual resolution in north Xinjiang, the upper Yellow River valley, and the Hetao area were constructed for analyses of the last 500 years. Dry-wet oscillations with periodicities of 16, 50, and 150 years in north Xinjiang, 50 years in the upper Yellow River valley, and 70-80 years in the Hetao region were identified by wavelet analysis. In general, these periods correspond to large-scale oscillations found in the climate system, are mainly related to ocean-atmosphere interaction.
The East Asian summer monsoon(EASM)and its related change of surface temperature in the past century were not clearly addressed due to absence of atmospheric reanalysis data before 1948.On the benchmark of station-observed sea level pressure(SLP)in China,we utilized multiple SLP datasets and evaluated their qualities in measuring the SLP-based EASM index(EASMI).It is found that the EASMI based on the SLP of the Hadley center version 2(HadSLP2)has shown the best performance on the interannual and decadal time scales.Instead of showing a linear weakening trend pointed out by the previous study,the EASMI has likely exhibited the decadal variability,characterized by weakened trends during 1880–1906,1921–1936,and 1960–2004,and with enhanced trends during 1906–1921 and 1936–1960,respectively.Corresponding to the weakened and enhanced periods of EASMI since the 1920s,the surface air temperature(SAT)index(SATI)averaged in eastern China has likely shown a warming and a cooling trend,respectively.However,the decadal abrupt transitions between the two indices do not occur concurrently,which results in a weak correlation between two indices on the decadal time scale.Further analysis indicates that there are four key regions where the SAT is significantly correlated with the EASMI,suggesting the joint impact of surface temperature in Asia-Pacific on the EASM during 1880–2004.In which,the decadal change of SAT near the Lake Baikal plays an important role in the linear trends of the EASM before and after 1960.
Despite many studies on reconstructing the climate changes over the last millennium in China,the cause of the China's climate change remains unclear.We used the UVic Earth System Climate Model(UVic Model),an Earth system model of intermediate complexity,to investigate the contributions of climate forcings(e.g.solar insolation variability,anomalous volcanic aerosols,greenhouse gas,solar orbital change,land cover changes,and anthropogenic sulfate aerosols) to surface air temperature over East China in the past millennium.The simulation of the UVic Model could reproduce the three main characteristic periods(e.g.the Medieval Warm Period(MWP),the Little Ice Age(LIA),and the 20th Century Warming Period(20CWP)) of the northern hemisphere and East China,which were consistent with the corresponding reconstructed air temperatures at century scales.The simulation result reflected that the air temperature anomalies of East China were larger than those of the global air temperature during the MWP and the first half of 20CWP and were lower than those during the LIA.The surface air temperature of East China over the past millennium has been divided into three periods in the MWP,four in the LIA,and one in the 20CWP.The MWP of East China was caused primarily by solar insolation and secondarily by volcanic aerosols.The variation of the LIA was dominated by the individual sizes of the contribution of solar insolation variability,greenhouse gas,and volcano aerosols.Greenhouse gas and volcano aerosols were the main forcings of the third and fourth periods of the LIA,respectively.We examined the nonlinear responses among the natural and anthropogenic forcings in terms of surface air temperature over East China.The nonlinear responses between the solar orbit change and anomalous volcano aerosols and those between the greenhouse gases and land cover change(or anthropogenic sulfate aerosols) all contributed approximately 0.2℃ by the end of 20th century.However,the output of the energy-moisture balance atmospheric model from UVic showed
