Using observational data,the East Asian-North Indian Ocean index(IEANI),which reflects a tropospheric thermal contrast,is found to correlate well with the East Asian summer monsoon(EASM) and associated rainfall over eastern China.Corresponding to a higher(lower) IEANI,the EASM at mid-latitudes is stronger(weaker),and there is more(less) rainfall in North China and less(more) rainfall near the Yangtze River valley.To investigate long-term variation in the EASM,we reconstructed the BC 665-AD 1985 IEANI based on reconstructed temperatures in Beijing and Tasmania,Australia.Over the past 2000 years,the reconstructed IEANI generally represents centennial-scale variations in the EASM and rainfall over eastern China.The correlation pattern between the reconstructed IEANI and rainfall over eastern China is similar to modern observations,implying that the correlation feature at centennial scales also occurred over the past 2000 years.With respect to longer-scale(several hundreds to one thousand years) IEANI variations and their correlations with rainfall,further verifications should be performed using various paleoclimatic proxy data.
The ring-width chronology of a Juniperus przewalskii tree from the middle of the Qilian Mountain was constructed to estimate the annual precipitation (from previous August to current July) since AD 1480.The reconstruction showed four major alternations of drying and wetting over the past 521 years.The rainy 16th century was followed by persistent drought in the 17th century.Moreover,relatively wet conditions persisted from the 18th to the beginning of 20th century until the recurrence of a drought during the 1920s and 1930s.Based on the Empirical Mode Decomposition method,eight Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) were extracted,each representing unique fluctuations of the reconstructed precipitation in the time-frequency domain.The high amplitudes of IMFs on different timescales were often consistent with the high amount of precipitation,and vice versa.The IMF of the lowest frequency indicated that the precipitation has undergone a slow increasing trend over the past 521 years.The 2-3 year and 5-8 year time-scales reflected the characteristics of inter-annual variability in precipitation relevant to regional atmospheric circulation and the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO),respectively.The 10-13 year scale of IMF may be associated with changing solar activity.Specifically,an amalgamation of previous and present data showed that droughts were likely to be a historically persistent feature of the Earth's climate,whereas the probability of intensified rainfall events seemed to increase during the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.These changing characteristics in precipitation indicate an unprecedented alteration of the hydrological cycle,with unknown future amplitude.Our reconstruction complements existing information on past precipitation changes in the Qilian Mountain,and provides additional low-frequency information not previously available.
Most real-world time series have some degree of nonstationarity due to external perturbations of the observed system; external driving forces are the essential reason that leads to the nonstationarity of dynamics system. In this paper, the authors present a novel technique in which the authors incorporate external forces to predict nonstationary time series. To test the effect, the authors also examined two prediction experiments with an ideal time series from a logistic map and a proxy climate dataset for the past millennium. The preliminary results show that the resulting algorithm has better predictive ability than the one that does not consider the external forces.
The linkage between the Asian-Pacific Oscillation (APO) and the sea surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific during the summertime (June-August) is preliminarily investigated through an analysis of observed data.It is found that APO is significantly and positively correlated to the North Pacific SST,with the correlation coefficient being 0.58 on the interannual timescale during the period 1954-2003,which suggests that a strong (weak) APO corresponds to high (low) SST in the North Pacific.Their in-phase relationship is well supported by the dynamic and thermal conditions in association with the APO anomaly.When APO is in the positive phase,the East Asian westerly jet in the upper troposphere is weakened,and the anomalous anticyclonic circulation prevails in the low-troposphere over the North Pacific.Besides,the negative anomaly of the sensible and latent heat fluxes is predominated in the North Pacific,indicating ocean gets heat flux from the atmosphere.Meanwhile,warm water advection northward is strengthened in the North Pacific.All of these provide beneficial conditions to warm the North Pacific SST,and thus the SST is increased in this region,and vice versa.
Using meteorological observations, proxies of precipitation and temperature, and climate simulation outputs, we synthetically analyzed the regularities of decadal-centennial-scale changes in the summer thermal contrast between land and ocean and summer precipitation over the East Asian monsoon region during the past millennium; compared the basic characteristics of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) circulation and precipitation in the present day, the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Medieval Warm Period (MWP); and explored their links with solar irradiance and global climate change. The results indicate that over the last 150 years, the EASM circulation and precipitation, indicated by the temperature contrast between the East Asian mainland and adjacent oceans, had a significant decadal perturbation and have been weaker during the period of rapid global warming over the past 50 years. On the centennial time scale, the EASM in the MWP was strongest over the past 1000 years. Over the past 1000 years, the EASM was weakest in 1450-1570. When the EASM circulation was weaker, the monsoon rain belt over eastern China was generally located more southward, with there being less precipitation in North China and more precipitation in the Yangtze River valley; therefore, there was an anomalous pattern of southern flood/northern drought. From the 1900s to 1920s, precipitation had a pat- tern opposite to that of the southern flood/northern drought, with there being less precipitation in the Yangtze River valley and more precipitation in North China. Compared with the case for the MWP, there was a longer-time-scale southern flood/northern drought phenomenon in 1400-1600. Moreover, the EASM circulation and precipitation did not synchronously vary with the trend of global temperature. During the last 150 years, although the annual mean surface temperature around the world and in China has increased, the EASM circulation and precipitation did not have strengthening or weakening trends. Over the past 1000 years, the weakest EASM oc
