An Aridity Trend in China and Its Abrupt Feature in Association with the Global Warming

A distinct aridity trend in China in last 100 years is presented by applying a linear fitting to both the climate records and the hydrological records, which is supported by evidence of environmental changes and seems to be associated with a global warming trend during this period.The Mann Kendall Rank statistic test reveals a very interesting feature that the climate of China entered into a dry regime abruptly in about 1920's, which synchronized with the rapid warming of the global temperature at almost the same time.According to an analysis of the meridional profile of observed global zonal mean precipitation anomalies during the peak period of global wanning (1930-1940), the drought occurred in whole middle latitude zone (25°N-55°N) of the Northern Hemisphere, where the most part of China is located in. Although this pattern is in good agreement with the latitude distribution of the difference of zonal mean rates of precipitation between 4 × CO2 and 1 × CO2 simulated by climate model (Manabe and Wetherald, 1983), more studies are required to understand the linkage between the aridity trend in China and the greenhouse effect.The EOF analysis of the Northern Hemisphere sea level pressure for the season of June to August shows an abrupt change of the time coefficient of its first eigenvector from positive to negative in mid-1920's, indicating an enhancement of the subtropical high over Southeast Asia and the western Pacific after that time. This is an atmospheric circulation pattern that is favorable to the development of dry climate in China.

A Further Study on an Extended Nonlinear Ocean-Atmosphere Coupled Hydrodynamic Characteristic System and the Abrupt Feature of ENSO Events

An extended ocean-atmosphere coupled characteristic system including thermodynamic physical processes in ocean mixed layer is formulated in order to describe SST explicitly and remove possible limitation of ocean-atmosphere coupling assumption in hydrodynamic ENSO models. It is revealed that there is a kind of abrupt nonlinear characteristic behaviour, which relates to rapid onset and intermittency of El Nino events, on the second order slow time scale due to the nonlinear interaction between a linear unstable low-frequency primary eigen component of ocean-atmosphere coupled Kelvin wave and its higher order harmonic components under a strong ocean-atmosphere coupling background. And, on the other hand, there is a kind of finite amplitude nonlinear characteristic behaviour on the second order slow time scale due to the nonlinear interaction between the linear unstable primary eigen component and its higher order harmonic components under a weak ocean-atmosphere coupling background in this model system.

ABRUPT CHANGE IN ELEMENTS AROUND 1998 SCS SUMMER MONSOON ESTABLISHMENT WITH ANALYSIS OF ITS CHARACTERISTIC PROCESS

The latest dataset from the SCS(South China Sea)Monsoon Experiment is used to investigate the features of abrupt change in some meteorological elements before,during and after the summer monsoon's establishment in 1998 and explore its onset characteristic process.We have arrived at a preliminary conclusion that the 1998 Asian summer monsoon is established first in the SCS as early as May 23,which is representative of the earliest indicator of the conversion from a winter into a summer monsoon situation in Asia;the continued retreat eastward of the western Pacific subtropical high from the SCS region has direct effect on the SCS summer monsoon establishment because the withdrawal favors the release of unstable energy,responsible for the sudden onset of the monsoon.Our tentative investigation indicates that the eastward extension of the westerly and rainfall band from the equatorial Indian Ocean into the Indo-China Peninsula and the southward spreading of an active South-China stationary front,acting as the interaction between mid and low latitude systems,are likely to be the characteristic events contributing to the subtropical high's eastward retreating and the summer monsoon's onset over the SCS.