This study investigates the projected changes in interannual variability of South Asian summer monsoon and changes of ENSO-monsoon relationships in the 21st century under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios A1B and A2, respectively, by analyzing the simulated results of twelve Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) coupled models. The dynamical monsoon index (DMI) was adopted to describe the interannual variability of South Asian summer monsoon, and the standard deviation (SD) was used to illustrate the intensity of interannual variability. It was found that most models could project enhanced interannual variability of monsoon in the 21st century. The multi-model ensemble (MME) results showed increases in the interannual variability of DMI: 14.3% and 20.0% under scenarios A1B and A2, respectively. The MME result also showed increases in the rainfall variability are of about 10.2% and 22.0% under scenarios A1B and A2. The intensification of interannual variability tended to occur over the regions that have larger variability currently; that is, "the strong get stronger". Another finding was that ENSO-monsoon relationships are likely to be enhanced in the 21st century. The dynamical component of the monsoon will be more closely correlated to ENSO in the future under global warming, although the ENSO-summer rainfall relationship cannot be reasonably projected by current models. This suggests that the South Asian summer monsoon is more predictable in the future, at least dynamically.
In this study,we found that the intensity of interannual variability in the summer upper-tropospheric zonal wind has significantly weakened over Northeast Asia and the subtropical western North Pacific(WNP) since the mid-1990s,concurrent with the previously documented decrease of the westerly jet over North China and Northwest China.Corresponding to this weakening of zonal wind variability,the meridional displacement of the East Asian westerly jet(EAJ) manifested as the leading mode of zonal wind variability over the WNP and East Asia(WNP-EA) before the mid-1990s but not afterward.The energetics of the anomalous pattern associated with the meridional displacement of the EAJ suggests that barotropic energy conversion,from basic flow to anomalous patterns,has led to the weakening of the variability in the EAJ meridional displacement and to a change in the leading dominant mode since the mid-1990s.The barotropic energy conversion efficiently maintained the anomalies associated with the variability in the EAJ meridional displacement during 1979-1993 but acted to dampen the anomalies during 1994-2008.A further investigation of the energetics suggests that the difference in the patterns of the circulation anomaly associated with either the first leading mode or the meridional displacement of the EAJ,i.e.,a southwest-northeast tilted pattern during 1979-1993 and a zonally oriented pattern during 1994-2008,has contributed greatly to the change in barotropic energy conversion.
Changing precipitation in the densely populated Sichuan basin may have a great impact on human life. This study analyzes the change in summer precipitation since 1951 over the western Sichuan basin, one of the regions of the heaviest rainfall in China, by using two datasets provided by the Chinese Meteorological Data Center. The results indicate that summer (from June to September) precipitation over the western Sichuan basin shows a significantly decreasing trend. The summer precipitation over this region has decreased by about 20% since the 1950s, with a rate of decrease of about 40 mm per decade.
A zonal teleconnection has been found along the Asian jet over the Eurasian continent during summer.In this study,the authors investigated circulation anomalies in the extratropics,in particular for the zonal teleconnection,under different combinations of subtropical convection anomalies over the northern Indian continent (IND) and the western North Pacific (WNP).The outof-phase configuration (i.e.,stronger (weaker) IND convection and weaker (stronger) WNP convection) was found to be more common than the in-phase configuration (i.e.,stronger (weaker) IND convection and stronger (weaker) WNP convection),which is consistent with previous results.Composite results indicated that circulation anomalies for out-of-phase configurations of 30-60-day convection oscillations are much stronger in the middle latitudes than those for in-phase configurations.In addition,zonal teleconnection patterns are predominant for the out-of-phase configurations,particularly for the configuration of strong IND convection and weak WNP convection;however,they are either weak or obscure for the in-phase configurations.These results suggest that the zonal teleconnection pattern along the Asian jet is dependent on different combinations of the IND and WNP subtropical convection anomalies.
