Interannual Variations of Summer Precipitation in Southwest China: Anomalies in the Moisture Transport and Roles of the Tropical Atlantic

Using a Lagrangian trajectory model, contributions of moisture from the Indian Ocean (IO), South China Sea (SCS), adjacent land region (LD) and Pacific Ocean (PO) to the interannual summer precipitation variations in Southwest China (SWC) are investigated. Results show that on average, IO, SCS, LD, and PO contribute 46.8%, 25.3%, 21.8% and 2.3% of total moisture release in SWC in summer. In the above-normal precipitation summers, the moisture from IO and LD is increased by 48.2% and 28.8%, whereas that from SCS is decreased by 37.2%. In the below-normal precipitation summers, the moisture from IO and LD is decreased by 34.6% and 25.2%, while that from SCS is increased by 23.7%. In addition, the moisture anomalies from the four source regions can explain 85% of the total variances of the SWC summer precipitation.

The variations in the moisture from IO, SCS, and LD to SWC are not independent to one another and strongly influenced by the large-scale atmospheric circulation anomalies in the lower troposphere analogous to the Pacific-Japan (PJ) pattern and further studies showed that the PJ pattern was stimulated by the SST anomaly in the equatorial Atlantic. The anomalous warming in the tropical Atlantic that can modify the Walker circulation and introduce an anomalous descending over the central Pacific, thus inducing the anomalous anticyclone in the western North Pacific as the classical Matsuno-Gill response. The resultant suppressed precipitation in the western North Pacific excites the PJ pattern. The observed impacts of the tropical Atlantic SSTs on the atmospheric circulation can be well reproduced in an atmospheric general circulation model and the ability of the CMIP5 and CMIP6 models to reappear this relationship is verified, which will help the models to improve the simulation performance of summer large-scale circulation anomalies and precipitation in East Asia.