It is of great social and scientific importance and also very difficult to make reliable prediction for dust weather frequency (DWF) in North China. In this paper, the correlation between spring DWF in Beijing and Tianjin observation stations, taken as examples in North China, and seasonally averaged surface air temperature, precipitation, Arctic Oscillation, Antarctic Oscillation, South Oscillation, near surface meridional wind and Eurasian westerly index is respectively calculated so as to construct a prediction model for spring DWF in North China by using these climatic factors. Two prediction models, i.e. model-I and model-II, are then set up respectively based on observed climate data and the 32-year (1970 -2001) extra-seasonal hindcast experiment data as reproduced by the nine-level Atmospheric General Circulation Model developed at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP9L-AGCM). It is indicated that the correlation coefficient between the observed and predicted DWF reaches 0.933 in the model-I, suggesting a high prediction skill one season ahead. The corresponding value is high up to 0.948 for the subsequent model-II, which involves synchronous spring climate data reproduced by the IAP9L-AGCM relative to the model-I. The model-II can not only make more precise prediction but also can bring forward the lead time of real-time prediction from the model-I’s one season to half year. At last, the real-time predictability of the two models is evaluated. It follows that both the models display high prediction skill for both the interannual variation and linear trend of spring DWF in North China, and each is also featured by different advantages. As for the model-II, the prediction skill is much higher than that of original approach by use of the IAP9L-AGCM alone. Therefore, the prediction idea put forward here should be popularized in other regions in China where dust weather occurs frequently.
LANG XianMei Center for Disastrous Climate Research and Prediction, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
Based on the observation and reanalysis data through 1948―2004, the vertical shear of zonal wind, outgoing longwave radiation, and divergence fields in the lower and upper troposphere during summer are revealed to correlate significantly with the concurrent western North Pacific (WNP) typhoon fre-quency, and they therefore can be regarded as predictors for the WNP typhoon activity anomaly. After that, the 34-year (1970―2003) ensemble hindcast experiments are performed by the nine-level atmos-pheric general circulation model developed at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics Under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP9L-AGCM), aiming to investigate the numerical predictability of the summer vertical shear of zonal wind and divergence field in the lower troposphere. It is found that the temporal correlation coefficients between the hindcast and observation are 0.70 and 0.62 for the vertical shear of zonal wind and divergence field, respectively. This suggests that the model possesses a large potential skill for predicting the large-scale climate background closely related to the WNP typhoon activity, and the model is therefore capable of performing the real-time numerical prediction of the WNP typhoon activity anomaly to some extent.
