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A dry-wet teleconnection between southwestern and northeastern China in winter and early spring

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Abstract

Global climate change has led to more frequent and intense dry and wet extremes, causing considerable socio-economic losses, but whether these extremes in distant regions are linked and what mechanisms are driving their changes remain unclear. Based on the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index and ERA5 reanalysis data, this study reveals a dry-wet teleconnection between southwestern China (SWC) and northeastern China (NEC) from January to April: when SWC was extremely dry, NEC tended to be anomalously wet, and vice versa. Although the seesawing teleconnection is most significant on interannual time scales, it also experienced interdecadal changes, with wet SWC and dry NEC in 1979–1998 and 2019-present and dry SWC and wet NEC in 1999–2018. Further investigations suggest that the pattern of dry SWC and wet NEC is related to anomalous anticyclones (cyclones) over SWC (NEC), which lead to significant changes in surface temperature and total precipitation in the respective regions. The dryness in western (eastern) SWC is mainly influenced by the changes in temperature (precipitation), while the NEC wetness is affected mainly by the changes in temperature. Observational and modeling studies further suggest that the pressure anomalies over SWC and NEC are caused by zonally and meridionally propagating Rossby wave trains, triggered by the North Atlantic Oscillation and the enhanced Indo-Pacific convection, respectively. These wave trains further lead to hydroclimatic extremes in North America, southern Europe, and the Middle East by regulating the atmospheric circulation anomalies over these regions.

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Data availability

The SPEI data is available from the Global SPEI database at website https://spei.csic.es/spei_database/. The ERA5 reanalysis data is publicly available from the ECMWF website https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/search%3Ftext=ERA5type=dataset.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42230603 and 42275020), the Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research (2020B0301030004), the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies (2020B1212060025), and the Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (311021001). K.D. is also supported by the open funds of the State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, MNR (QNHX2310) and the Key Laboratory of South China Sea Meteorological Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of Hainan Province (SCSF202310).

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42230603 and 42275020), the Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research (2020B0301030004), the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies (2020B1212060025), and the Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (311021001). K.D. is also supported by the open fund of State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, MNR (QNHX2310) and the Future Earth Early-Career Fellowship of the Future Earth Global Secretariat Hub China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China

    Kaiqiang Deng, Song Yang, Ke Fan, Ziqian Wang, Wei Yu, Ziyun Huang & Ming Xia

  2. Key Laboratory of South China Sea Meteorological Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, Hainan Province, Haikou, China

    Kaiqiang Deng & Tao Lian

  3. Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China

    Kaiqiang Deng & Song Yang

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Deliang Chen

  5. Nansen-Zhu International Research Centre, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Baoqiang Tian

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  1. Kaiqiang Deng
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Contributions

Kaiqiang Deng, Song Yang, and Ke Fan contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Kaiqiang Deng. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kaiqiang Deng, Song Yang and Deliang Chen. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Deng, K., Yang, S., Fan, K. et al. A dry-wet teleconnection between southwestern and northeastern China in winter and early spring. Clim Dyn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07228-9

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