Contributions to the Interannual Summer Rainfall Variability in the Mountainous Area of Central China and Their Decadal Changes

Interdecadal change in the influence of El Niño in the developing stage on the central China summer precipitation

“…The central China locates between the middle reaches of the Yangtze River basin and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River basin and is an important agricultural and industrial center (Sun et al 2010;Ren et al 2013;Ke and Guan 2014;Hu et al 2020). The local livelihood of millions of people and development of economies are vulnerable to the variations of summer precipitation, especially the droughts and floods brought by extreme precipitation anomalies (Hu et al 2020).…”

“…The central China locates between the middle reaches of the Yangtze River basin and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River basin and is an important agricultural and industrial center (Sun et al 2010;Ren et al 2013;Ke and Guan 2014;Hu et al 2020). The local livelihood of millions of people and development of economies are vulnerable to the variations of summer precipitation, especially the droughts and floods brought by extreme precipitation anomalies (Hu et al 2020). For example, the severe summer drought in Henan Province in 2014 (Wang et al 2018) and the record-breaking Meiyu event over the Yangtze River basin in 2020 (Liu et al 2020;Ding et al 2021;Qiao et al 2021;Zheng and Wang 2021;Zhou et al 2021) seriously threatened the local people's living conditions and garnered much public attention.…”

“…El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant interannual mode of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system in the tropics, exerting important influences on the EASM via the atmospheric teleconnection (Zhang and Sumi 1999;Wang et al 2000Wang et al , 2021Chen 2002;Deser et al 2010;Hu et al 2017Hu et al , 2020Li and Lu 2020;Jiang et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). El Niño, as the warm phase of ENSO, generally develops in boreal summer and the early autumn, reaches its peak in boreal winter, and decays in the following spring and summer (An and Wang 2001;Tozuka and Yamagata 2003;Lau et al 2005;Xie et al 2009).…”

“…For the El Niño decaying summer, an anomalous anticyclone exists over the Northwest Pacific (NWP). It could enhance the EASM and transport abundant moisture to the mainland, causing excessive precipitation over the Yangtze River basin (Zhang and Sumi 1999;Chang et al 2000a, b;Wang et al 2000Wang et al , 2003Wang et al , 2013Xie et al 2009;Xie and Zhou 2017;Li et al 2017bLi et al , 2021aHu et al 2017Hu et al , 2019Hu et al , 2020. In the past two decades, several theories were formed to explain the maintaining of the anomalous NWP anticyclone during the El Niño decaying summer.…”

“…While a large number of previous studies focused on the influence of El Niño on the East Asian climate in the decaying summer (Chen et al 2016(Chen et al , 2018Xie et al 2016;Hu et al 2017Hu et al , 2020He et al 2019), the impacts of El Niño in the developing summer on the East Asian climate, however, are relatively less studied. Previous studies (Wu et al 2009;Wen et al 2019Wen et al , 2020 revealed that there is increased precipitation in the southeastern China and decreased precipitation in the northern-central China during the developing summer of El Niño.…”