A teleconnection between sea surface temperature in the central and eastern Pacific and wintertime haze variations in so
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A teleconnection between sea surface temperature in the central and eastern Pacific and wintertime haze variations in southern China Xugeng Cheng 1,2 & Jane Liu 1,3
&
Tianliang Zhao 2 & Sunling Gong 4 & Xiangde Xu 5 & Xiaoning Xie 6 & Rong Wang 1
Received: 22 June 2020 / Accepted: 11 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Haze pollution in recent decades varies largely with both pollutant emissions and meteorological conditions. Using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) method, we separate these two influences on haze variations in southern China in the time series of haze observations from 1981 to 2011. This helps us to identify the meteorological influence on interannual variation in haze occurrences in southern China and thus observe a teleconnection between the thermal forcing of sea surface temperature (SST) in the central and eastern Pacific and wintertime haze occurrences in southern China (R = − 0.51, p < 0.05). The total haze days in winter is highest among all seasons over southern China and the climotological mean of number of winter haze days is 7.5 days for the region. Compared with the normal winters, the regional mean of the number of haze days in southern China is reduced by ~ 5 days in the winters with above-normal Niño3.4 SST (during El Niño phases), but increased by ~ 4 days in the winters with below-normal Niño3.4 SST (during La Niña phases). In the warm SST winters, the cumulative consequences of strong winds, more precipitation, and a more unstable atmosphere with an “upper colder and lower warmer” vertical pattern leading to more ascendance can all hinder haze formation, whereas in the cold SST winters, opposite meteorological conditions are favorable to haze formation. These meteorological conditions induced by anomalous SST make wintertime haze pollution in southern China vary from year to year to a large extent. This study suggests a strong sensitivity of winter haze occurrences in southern China to the viability of the SST in the central and eastern Pacific.
1 Introduction Haze with high concentrations of aerosols is one of societal and scientific concerns because of its negative effect on human health and ecosystem and its impact on climate change. Southern China (SC), including the Pearl River Delta (PRD), is one of the fastest growing economic areas in China over the last three decades, and thus is among the most polluted areas * Jane Liu [email protected] * Tianliang Zhao [email protected] 1
2
College of Geographic Sciences, Institute of Geography, Key Laboratory of Humid Subtropical Eco-geographical Process (Ministry of Education), Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Key Laboratory for Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation of China Meteorological Administration, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
in China (Wu et al. 2013b; Zhang et al. 2012). Winter haze events over SC have rapidly increased since 1960s (Ding and Liu
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