Authors:

XUE Feng, DONG Xiao and LIN Ren-Ping

International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Abstract:

By decomposing outgoing longwave radiation through empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis, the authors identify two anomalous convective systems in the tropical western Pacific. Besides the classical convective system near the Philippines (PC), there is another convective system near the Federated States of Micronesia (MC). As the first EOF component in this region, the variance explained by MC is higher than that by PC. Both MC and PC are regulated by the tropical sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. While PC is associated with an El Ni？o event, MC is correlated with SST anomalies in the central and eastern Pacific during summer. It is also found that the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is influenced by these two convective systems. In general, enhanced (suppressed) convection corresponds to an eastwards (westwards) western Pacific subtropical high with weak (strong) intensity. Besides, the summer monsoon rainfall from the Yangtze River basin to Japan tends to increase (decrease) when PC is suppressed (enhanced). By comparison, the influence of MC is generally weak, with vague signals in the East Asian continent. Moreover, the influence of suppressed convection on the EASM is more significant than that of enhanced convection.

Key words: 

Convection; Philippines; Micronesia; East Asian summer monsoon; western Pacific subtropical high

Citation:

Feng XUE, Xiao DONG & Ren-Ping LIN (2017): Two anomalous convective systems in the tropical western Pacific and their influences on the East Asian summer monsoon, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, DOI: 10.1080/16742834.2017.1328969