China's historical record when searching for tropical cyclones corresponding to Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) shifts over the past 2 kyr

Abstract

Abstract. The northwestern Pacific Ocean and South China Sea are where tropical cyclones occur most frequently. Many climatologists also study the formation of Pacific Ocean warm pools and typhoons in this region. This study collected data of paleotyphoons found in China's official historical records over the past 2000 years that contained known typhoon activity reports. The collected data are then subjected to statistical analyses focusing on typhoon activity in coastal regions of southeastern China to garner a better understanding of the long-term evolution of moving paths and occurrence frequency, especially regarding those typhoons making landfall in mainland China. We analyzed the data with the year and month of each typhoon event, as well as the number of events in a 10-year period. The result shows that (1) north–southward migration of typhoon paths corresponds to the north–southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) and (2) paleotyphoons made landfall in mainland China 1 month earlier during the MWP than during the LIA. This implies a northward shift in ITCZ during the MWP. Typhoons tend to make landfall in Japan during El Niño-like periods and strike the southern coastal regions of China during La Niña-like stages. According to paleotyphoon records over the last 2000 years, typhoons made landfall in southeastern China frequently around 490–510, 700–850, and after 1500 CE The number of typhoons striking Guangdong Province peaked during the coldest period in 1660–1680 CE; however, after 1700 CE, landfall has migrated farther north. The track of tropical cyclones (TCs) in the northwestern Pacific Ocean is affected by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which shows a nearly 30-year and a 60-year cycle during the LIA.

Climate indices in historical climate reconstructions: a global state of the art

“…Several other studies have used weather descriptions within documentary records to reconstruct past climate series in China. These include reconstructed winter thunderstorm frequency (Wang, 1980, spanning 250 BCE-1900, dust fall (Zhang, 1984, 1860-1898Fei et al, 2009, for the past 1700 years), and typhoon series in Guangdong (Liu et al, 2001, 1000-1909 and coastal China (Chen et al, 2019, 0-1911. Many scholars have also used information in Qing Yu Lu and Yu Xue Fen Cun to count and build winter snowfall days series (Zhou et al, 1994;Ge et al, 2003), while Hao et al (2012) further used the series to regress annual winter temperatures over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River since 1736 CE.…”

“…The date of the first recorded "song" of the adult cicada has also been used to reconstruct precipitation change during the rainy season in Hunan from the late 19th to early 20th century (on the principle that cicada growth to adulthood requires sufficient humidity, and this coincides with the peak rainy season; Xiao et al, 2008). In recent years, researchers have been able to reconstruct various series including typhoons (Chen et al, 2019;Lin et al, 2019) and droughts (Lin et al, 2020) from the compendium of Chinese records compiled by Zhang (2004).…”

“…These cold indices were then regressed with the decadal mean temperature (1873( -1972 to derive a coefficient through which the index value could be transferred into a "real" temperature. Chen and Shi (2002) built upon the approaches of Zhang (1980) and R. S. in developing an equation to calculate decadal temperature indices: T i = 10−2n 1 −n 2 +n 3 , where n 1 is the number of extremely cold years, n 2 is the number of cold years, and n 3 is the number of warm years. A resulting decadal temperature index value of 10 denotes average conditions; <10 denotes anomalous cold; and >10 denotes anomalous warm.…”

“…A resulting decadal temperature index value of 10 denotes average conditions; <10 denotes anomalous cold; and >10 denotes anomalous warm. Successive work (Tan and Liao, 2012;Tan and Wu, 2013) adopted the Chen and Shi (2002) approach with a slight modification of the index criteria while retaining the four-point ordinal scale. The temperature series generated using this approach have been incorporated into multi-proxy temperature reconstructions (e.g.…”

Climate indices in historical climate reconstructions: A global state-of-the-art

“…The date of the first recorded 'song' of the adult cicada has also been used to reconstruct precipitation change during the rainy season in Hunan from the late 19th to early 20th century (on the principle that cicada growth to adulthood requires sufficient humidity, and this coincides with the peak rainy season; Xiao et al, 2008). In recent years, researchers have been able to reconstruct various series including typhoons (Chen et al, 2019; and droughts (Lin et al, 2020) from the compendium of Chinese records compiled by Zhang (2004).…”