Linkages Between Tropical Cyclones and Extreme Precipitation over China and the Role of ENSO
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ARTICLE
Linkages Between Tropical Cyclones and Extreme Precipitation over China and the Role of ENSO Licheng Wang1 • Zhengnan Yang1 • Xihui Gu2 • Jianfeng Li3
Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This research investigated the linkages between tropical cyclones (TCs) and extreme precipitation, and their associations with El Nin˜o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over China. The contribution of TC-induced to total extreme precipitation events along the southeast coast of China was higher than 50%, and the values gradually decreased as TCs moved inland. However, the precipitation extremes (magnitude and frequency) related to TCs did not show statistically significant changes over the most recent 57 years. The impacts of TCs on precipitation extremes are evidently modulated by the ENSO phases. We found less extreme precipitation linked with TCs in southeastern China during El Nin˜o phase, because of the fewer TC tracks over this region and less TC genesis in the western North Pacific (WNP). The small TC track density over southeastern China is due to the prevalent westerly steering flow and abnormal integrated vapor transport from northern to southern China during El Nin˜o years. Additionally, warmer sea surface temperature, more vigorous westerlies, larger vorticity in 250 hPa, and higher divergence in 850 hPa in an El Nin˜o phase jointly displaced the mean genesis of the WNP TCs eastward and this led to fewer TCs passing through southeastern China.
& Xihui Gu [email protected] 1
Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
3
Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China
Keywords China ENSO (El Nin˜o-Southern Oscillation) Extreme precipitation Large-scale environmental variables Tropical cyclones
1 Introduction The disasters caused by tropical cyclones (TCs) are usually very severe and the accompanying property losses are huge (Zhang et al. 2009; Mumby et al. 2011; Peduzzi et al. 2012). Frequency and intensity of TCs, the two major features that are highly related to TC-induced losses, have been reported to increase in all TC basins (Webster et al. 2005). Yet TCs can be beneficial by mitigating soil moisture drying (Gu et al. 2019a). Global warming is an important contributor to the rise in the occurrence rate of high-intensity TCs (Mendelsohn et al. 2012). A large part of TCs around the world is generated in the western North Pacific (WNP), and TCs that originate from this region frequently attack eastern China, a region with booming socioeconomic development and the highest population density in the world (Zhang et al. 2009). Recently, China has been plagued by super typhoons that occur in the WNP, such as Mangkhut (ID: 1822, in 2018) that killed five people and led to economic losses of CNY 5.2 billion Yuan
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