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Spatiotemporal characteristics of spring rainfall over Southwest China and their relationships with sea surface temperature during 1961–2017

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Abstract

The spatiotemporal variability of southwest China (SWC) spring (March–April–May) rainfall (SWCSR) during 1961–2017 is investigated using rainfall data from 75 meteorological stations over SWC in this study. It is found that (1) SWC can be divided into four subregions using the rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) method: southern Yunnan province (SY), northwestern Yunnan province (NWY), eastern Guizhou province (EG), and northeastern Sichuan province (NES). (2) All subregions show significant 2–8-year periodicity on the interannual timescale. However, only SY rainfall shows significant interdecadal periodicity. (3) The spring La Niña has a significant impact on the simultaneous rainfall over SY. The sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the central North Pacific during late winter can be an important oceanic signal for the prediction of spring rainfall variability over NWY. The southern Indian Ocean dipole (SIOD)–like SSTA pattern during late autumn (early winter) can be an important predictor of rainfall variability over EG (NES) during the following spring. Moreover, the impact of the late autumn SIOD-like pattern on the following spring rainfall over EG is stronger than the impact of the early winter SIOD-like pattern on the NES rainfall during the following spring.

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Data availability

The data used in this study are available from the China Meteorological Data Service Center http://data.cma.cn/data/cdcdetail/dataCode/SURF_CLI_CHN_MUL_MON.html and the Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature data set https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst.

Code availability

All analyses were performed using the NCAR Command Language (Version 6.5.0).

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the China Meteorological Data Service Center and the Met Office Marine Data Bank for providing datasets, and we also thank the anonymous reviewer and Dr. Hartmut Graßl for their valuable comments to improve our manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41675062, 41575097).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Ocean Research in Hong Kong and Macau, Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Center, School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR, China

    Gang Li, Wen Zhou & Yue Zhang

  2. Yunnan Climate Center, Kunming, 650034, China

    Hongming Yan

Authors
  1. Gang Li
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  2. Wen Zhou
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  3. Yue Zhang
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  4. Hongming Yan
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Contributions

The participation of Gang Li and Yue Zhang includes the data collection, analyzing the results, and writing the article, and the participation of Wen Zhou and Hongming Yan includes analyzing the results.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wen Zhou.

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Li, G., Zhou, W., Zhang, Y. et al. Spatiotemporal characteristics of spring rainfall over Southwest China and their relationships with sea surface temperature during 1961–2017. Theor Appl Climatol 145, 775–786 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03648-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03648-3

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