Regional characteristics of long‐term changes in total and extreme precipitations over China and their links to atmospheric–oceanic features

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The regional features of long-term changes in total and extreme precipitations over eight China domains and their seasonality and relationships with large-scale and local atmospheric and oceanic factors are investigated. A newly compiled data set of 917 China stations from the China National Meteorological Information Center with strict quality control is analysed. Wintertime extreme precipitation has increased persistently in all China domains, together with an obvious wetting tendency except in North China. In spring, an increase in extreme precipitation is also seen except in South China, but total precipitation increases only in half of China. A 'northern drying and southern wetting' (NDSW) pattern is found over eastern China for both extreme and total precipitations in summer when precipitation increases significantly in Northwest China (NWCH). Different features are found in autumn when negative trends are found in most of the China domains for total precipitation (except in NWCH and the Tibetan Plateau) and half of the domains for extreme precipitation. Overall, the frequency of extreme precipitation plays a dominant role in determining the extreme precipitation trend compared to the intensity of precipitation. The long-term changes in total precipitation and extreme ratio (extreme precipitation to total precipitation) are both strongly linked to the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) from the Indian Ocean to the Maritime Continent, the Kuroshio, the central-eastern Pacific, and part of the Atlantic Ocean. In summer, the NDSW pattern is closely associated with the weakening of East Asian monsoon circulation and the increase in land surface temperature of 40 ∘ -60 ∘ N. Local warming trends also contribute to the trends of extreme ratio in several domains in particular seasons.

Estimating Trends and Return Periods of Daily Extreme Precipitation Associated with Tropical Cyclones in the Core North American Monsoon

“…2). This also agrees with the results of [36], who found that while the intensity of summer precipitation in Sonora state increased significantly since 1977, in association with the +PDO phase, the monsoon season became shorter, resulting in a non-significant upward trend in precipitation [10] (Figs 2a-c). The linear trend of the percentage contribution of P95 associated with TCs was significantly increased (0.86% decade -1 , p<0.05) during the period 1961-2000 (Fig.…”

“…[7][8][9]. Increases in positive anomalies of relative humidity, surface temperature, SST and negative anomalies of radiation are environmental phenomena that can take place in the NAM and can cause the highest precipitations in the CNAM [10][11][12][13], which is common during the summer and influenced by the NAM and events from TCs. Recently, it has been argued that one of the biggest impacts of climate change will result from increased AADEP with return periods that can happen at any time, anywhere on the planet [14].…”

“…The effects of hurricanes with increasing precipitation, trends which have been identified in the period 1981-2000, were also reported by [40]: "Hurricanes of major intensity contributed in irrigation districts 063 and 065 with a hydraulic loading of 25 m, which was registered for the first time in 30 years with a recovery of 1.2 m in the 1990s." These five hurricanes were Lidia (September [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]1993, which occurred during a neutral event), Ismael (September 12-15, 1995, during a neutral event), Fausto (September [10][11][12][13][14]1996, during a neutral event), and Isis (September 1-3, 1998, during a La Niña event), and only one cyclone event in the period September 18-30, 1982, which occurred during a strong summer El Niño. These results are similar to those reported by [33,39], who found that there was a strong El Niño event in 1982 and La Niña events in late 1990.…”

Interannual rainfall variability over China in the MetUM GA6 and GC2 configurations

“…Observed 1961-2012 precipitation trends over China do not exceed 2 mm year −1 in any season in any region (Wang and Yang, 2017). The interannual variability of the EOT time series are typically 2 orders of magnitude larger.…”

Variability of seasonal precipitation extremes over China and their associations with large‐scale ocean–atmosphere oscillations

“…Several studies reported that annual extreme precipitation has increased in northwest China (Zhang et al, 2012;Jiang et al, 2013), the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin, parts of the southwest and south China coastal areas (Zhai et al, 2005), and decreased in north China (Fan et al, 2012), Yellow River basin (Fu et al, 2013) and the Sichuan Basin (Zhai et al, 2005). Increasing trends of extreme precipitation have been observed in all seasons in northwest China, but in the Yangtze River basin, extreme precipitation only increased in winter and summer (Wang and Yang, 2017). Thus, seasonal features are important for gaining more detailed information of changes in extreme precipitation.…”