The Newtonian relaxation is used to assimilate data from the Second Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP2) into the initial field for soil moisture in a regional climate model (i.e., BCC_RegCM 1.0, hereinafter called RegCM). The results show that different nudging parameters can improve the simulation of the air temperature and the precipitation to some extent in summertime season over East China. When the nudging intensity is 0.5 and nudging duration is 5 days, the result is desirable. Introducing the data assimilation of soil moisture into RegCM, the amelioration is not only in the spatial distribution pattern but also in the magnitude of the temperature and the precipitation. More specifically, the assimilation experiments have corrected the systematical cold bias of the air temperature and the precipitation on the low side, which is much closer to the observation compared with the control experiment. On the whole, the assimilation experiments shed light on the fact that the simulated bias in the original RegCM may be affected by the description of soil moisture in the land surface process. Therefore, the effect of soil moisture in RegCM should be paid more attention in the future.
HU YaMin1,2,3, DING YiHui4 & LIAO Fei2 1 Institute of Tropical and Marine Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, Guangzhou 510080, China
By using BCC_RegCM 1.0 (RegCM for short) from Beijing Climate Center (BCC), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), the Meiyu season characters over the Yangtze-Huaihe region during 1991-2005 are simulated. The major conclusions of this study may be summarized as the following: (1) RegCM can reproduce the interannual variation and the spatial distribution of the summertime precipitation and temperature in the Yangtze-Huaihe region. (2) By use of a generalized Meiyu criterion and in accordance with model-calculated precipitation and temperature, the Meiyu onset and ending date have been determined. Compared with the observation, RegCM can simulate the interannual variation of the Yangtze-Huaihe Meiyu with preferable capability for most of the normal Meiyu years (such as 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004), especially for the rich Meiyu years of 1996, 1998 and 1999. (3) In terms of the average simulation for the recent 15 years, the timings of onset and ending of Meiyu occur on June 1 and July 13, respectively, which are earlier than the climatological observation. For duration, Meiyu persists for 32 d, 3 d shorter than the observation. The index of Meiyu intensity is 2.45, while the climatological one is 3.00. Therefore, RegCM is capable of simulating the climatological Meiyu duration and intensity, while the capability of simulating the onset and ending date of Meiyu still needs to be improved.
HU YaMin1,2,3& DING YiHui4 1 Institute of Tropical and Marine Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, Guangzhou 510080, China
Yunnan Province of China suffered a record-breaking drought that persisted from autumn 2009 into spring 2010. The present study examined the physical causes of this extreme drought event in terms of persistent anomalies of intraseasonal oscillation in the tropical atmosphere (the Madden-Julian Oscillation hereafter the MJO). The results show that the occurrence of severe drought in Yunnan was caused directly by deficient rainfall lasting from the summer of 2009 to the spring of 2010. Further exploration reveals a persistent positive variation of MJO index 1 from June to October. Accordingly, the convective activity over the Bay of Bengal (BOB) weakened continuously, and then an anomalous descending airflow was induced over the tropical Indian Ocean, resulted in the anomalous weakening of vertical Asian monsoon circulation in South Asia. Consequently, the transport of water vapor from the tropical Indian Ocean to Yunnan decreased abnormally, leading to persistent below-normal rainfall over Yunnan from summer to autumn in 2009. As a result, a severe drought began to appear in autumn. In the winter of 2009-2010, MJO index 1 remained persistently positive, indicating the continuous weakening of convective activity over the BOB. The atmospheric circulation associated with the persistent positive anomalies in the MJO also demonstrated anomalous patterns. Specifically, there was an anomalous high-pressure ridge stretching from South Asia through the Tibetan Plateau and into the western part of southwestern China. This indicates that the atmospheric circulation over Yunnan was dominated by vertical descending airflow in the high-pressure ridge. Simultaneously, the India-Burma trough was weakened, which resulted in unfavorable conditions for the transport of water vapor from the BOB to Yunnan, causing the observed persistent deficient precipitation in winter and the subsequently intensified drought. Therefore, the persistent anomalies in MJO activity in the tropical atmosphere played an important role in the occurrence of
