Performance of Soft Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Grown in Early Season in China

Eating quality is of paramount importance to rice(Oryza sativa L.)consumers and soft rice with low amylose content has become popular in China.This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of soft rice grown in the early season(ES)dominated by non-soft rice.Field experiments were conducted in Yongan and Santang,Hunan Province,China from 2016-2018.Results showed that grain amylose content in soft rice cultivars was consistently lower in the ES compared to the late season(LS).The lower grain amylose content in the ES compared to the LS was partly attributed to higher average daily mean temperature during grain filling.No significant relationship was observed between grain yield and seed amylose content in ES rice.Soft rice cultivars produced a similar average grain yield to non-soft rice cultivars in the ES.These results encourage breeders to develop more ES rice cultivars with soft texture to meet the consumer demand for this type of rice.

Simulation of Potential Productivity of Early Season Rice Varieties in Different Reqions of South China

Rice is a staple food crop in China.Since the 1950’s,many new varieties havebeen used and resulted in great increase ofyield.However there were still some barriersin the nationwide extension of new varietiesdue to the insufficient information about thecharacteristics of varieties.So,it is impor-tant to find ways of determining the potential

Early-season crop type mapping using 30-m reference time series

Early-season crop type mapping could provide important information for crop growth monitoring and yield prediction,but the lack of ground-surveyed training samples is the main challenge for crop type identification.Although reference time series based method(RBM)has been proposed to identify crop types without the use of ground-surveyed training samples,the methods are not suitable for study regions with small field size because the reference time series are mainly generated using data set with low spatial resolution.As the combination of Landsat data and Sentinel-2 data could increase the temporal resolution of 30-m image time series,we improved the RBM by generating reference normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI)/enhanced vegetation index(EVI)time series at 30-m resolution(30-m RBM)using both Landsat and Sentinel-2 data,then tried to estimate the potential of the reference NDVI/EVI time series for crop identification at early season.As a test case,we tried to use the 30-m RBM to identify major crop types in Hengshui,China at early season of 2018,the results showed that when the time series of the entire growing season were used for classification,overall classification accuracies of the 30-m RBM were higher than 95%,which were similar to the accuracies acquired using the ground-surveyed training samples.In addition,cotton,spring maize and summer maize distribution could be accurately generated 8,6 and 8 weeks before their harvest using the 30-m RBM;but winter wheat can only be accurately identified around the harvest time phase.Finally,NDVI outperformed EVI for crop type classification as NDVI had better separability for distinguishing crops at the green-up time phases.Comparing with the previous RBM,advantage of 30-m RBM is that the method could use the samples of the small fields to generate reference time series and process image time series with missing value for early-season crop casification;while,samples collected from multiple years should be futher used so that the reference time series could contain more crop growth conditions.

ON STRONG SIGNALS OF MONTHLY PRECIPITATION ANOMALIES IN EARLY RAINING SEASON OF GUANGDONG AND CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF PREDICTION

Reanalysis data from NCEP/NCAR are used to systematically study preceding signals of monthly precipitation anomalies in the early raining season of Guangdong province, from the viewpoints of 500-hPa geopotential height field, outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) field, sea surface temperature (SST) and fourteen indexes of general circulation depicting atmosphere activity at high, middle and low latitutes. Being multiple tools of information, a number of conceptual models are formulated that are useful for prediction of the magnitude of monthly precipitation (drought, flood and normal conditionss).

NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF PERSISTENT WARMER SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE IN TROPICAL INDIAN OCEAN ON ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION IN THE EARLY SUMMER IN EAST ASIA IN 1991

By employing the CCM1(R15L12)long-range spectral model, study is undertaken of the effects of sea surface temperature anomaly(SSTA) for tropical Indian ocean on circulation transformation in the early summer in East Asia in 1991. The results indicate that warmer SSTA contributes to the increasing of the temperature over the Plateau in early summer, resulting in the intensification of tropical easterly jet on 100 hPa and northward shift of Northern Hemisphere subtropical westerly jet in May. It is obviously favorable for the subtropical high enhancement over western Pacific Ocean in May and subtropical westerly jet maintaining at 35～40 °N in June, making the Mei-Yu come earlier and stay over the Changjiang basin in 1991. Furthermore, warmer SSTA is also advantageous to averaged temperature rise in East Asia land region and Nanhai monsoon development. These roles are helpful in accelerating the seasonal transition for East Asia in early summer.

Spatial-Temporal Distribution of Summer Extreme Precipitation in South China and Response of Tropical Ocean

In the study, the summer extreme precipitation in South China is divided into early rainy season (MJ) and late rainy season (JA). The percentile method (95%) is used to define the extreme precipitation threshold. Based on the international general definition method of extreme precipitation threshold: percentile method (95%), the extreme precipitation thresholds in flood season before and after South China are defined respectively. The total amount and frequency of extreme precipitation in flood season before and after 1979-2014 are calculated in this paper. The change trend of the two indicators is basically the same, and the two indicators have obvious interannual variation and an upward trend. According to the results of wavelet analysis of extreme precipitation frequency, the frequency of extreme precipitation in the first flood season mainly has a period of 3 - 5 years, while the frequency of extreme precipitation in the later flood season has a significant period of 6 - 8 years. The spatial distribution of extreme precipitation before and after the flood season shows that the extreme precipitation in the former flood season is mainly distributed in the central part of Guangdong, the northeast of Guangxi and the western part of Fujian, and the extreme precipitation in the latter flood season mainly occurs in the southern coastal area. The results show that there are different tropical SST regions affecting the extreme precipitation in South China. The former flood season is mainly the tropical Indian Ocean warm SST, and the latter flood season is mainly the tropical Pacific warm SST. The tropical Indian Ocean SST stimulates the anticyclonic anomaly over the South China Sea, which brings the southwest warm and humid air flow into South China, resulting in the increase of extreme precipitation in the first flood season of South China;the tropical Pacific SST stimulates the cyclonic anomaly over the South China Sea, which reduces the water vapor outflow caused by the seasonal northward jump of the subtropical high in South China, resulting in the increase of extreme precipitation in the later flood season of South China.

Decadal variations in the season advancement of spring water cycle over Eastern China

Spring is the critical period for atmospheric circulation transition from winter to summer. The spring water cycle is very im- portant to agriculture in planting crop and the initial growth of crop. Note that there was a significant abrupt decadal change in the water budget increase during early spring over eastern China in the late 1970s. Studied here are the decadal variations of water budgets over the key regions and the associated change of water cycle over East Asia and atmospheric circulation over Asia-West Pacific region in early spring, using the observed （OBS） precipitation, the ECMWF （ERA） and NCEP/NCAR rea- nalysis （NRA）, and the Mantua＇s Pacific decadal oscillation index （PDOI）. The water budget increments from March to April exhibited a sharp decrease over the key region around Huaihe River basin （HHR） （111°-120°E; 31°-36°N） after year 1978. Before 1977 the water vapor flux through south boundary of the HHR region increased greatly during March to April by 1.52 mm d^-1 in ERA and 1.88 mm d^-1 in NRA. Concurrently the moisture convergence and precipitation over the region also in- creased greatly. The increment for the moisture convergence was 1.11 mmd^-1 in ERA and 1.22 mm d^-1 in NRA, and for the precipitation was 1.05 mm d^-1 in observation and 1.05 mm d^-1 in ERA. April was the time that the water budgets over HHR increased most rapidly before 1977. But after 1978 the water budgets decreased conversely from Mach to April. The water vapor flux increment through the south boundary was -0.03 mmd^-1 in ERA and 0.01 mm d^-1 in NRA, the moisture conver- gence increment was -0.91 mm d^-1 in ERA and -0.53 mm d^-1 in NRA, and precipitation increment was -0.08 mm d^-1 in ob- servation and -0.15 mm d^-1 in ERA. Further investigation has shown that the large-scale atmospheric circulation in the early spring has correspondingly changed significantly after the late 1970s. During March to April, the weakening of the trough over East Asia became significantly slower, and the strengthening of the ridge over the west China became significantly faster in the middle troposphere after the late 1970s. At the same time, in the lower troposphere, the strengthening and northward extending of the west pan of the subtropical high and the weakening of the trough over the southwest part of the Aleutian low in the early spring became slower, and the weakening of the main part of Asian high became slower, but the strengthening of its west part became faster. This significant decadal change of circulation caused a sharp decrease in the northward extending speed of wa- ter vapor transport, and in the water budgets increasing speed over the southeastern China during early spring after the late 1970s.