Summertime Atmospheric Teleconnection Pattern Associated with a Warming over the Eastern Tibetan Plateau

Abstract: By using a surface air temperature index (SATI) averaged over the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP), investigation is conducted on the short-term climate variation associated with the interannual air warming (or cooling) over the TP in each summer month. Evidence suggests that the SATI is associated with a consistent teleconnection pattern extending from the TP to central-western Asia and southeastern Europe. Associated rainfall changes include, for a warming case, a drought in northern India in May and June, and a stronger mei-yu front in June. The latter is due to an intensified upper-level northeasterly in eastern China and a wetter and warmer condition over the eastern TP. In the East Asian regions, the time-space distributions of the correlation patterns between SATI and rainfall are more complex and exhibit large differences from month to month. Some studies have revealed a close relationship between the anomalous heating over the TP and the rainfall anomaly along the Yangtze River valley appearing in the summer on a seasonal mean time-scale, whereas in the present study, this relationship only appears in June and the signal's significance becomes weaker after the long-term trend in the data was excluded. Close correlations between SATI and the convection activity and SST also occur in the western Pacific in July and August: A zonally-elongated warm tone in the SST in the northwestern Pacific seems to be a passive response of the associated circulation related to a warm SATI. The SATI-associated teleconnection pattern provides a scenario consistently linking the broad summer rainfall anomalies in Europe, central-western Asia, India, and East Asia.

Keywords:
• teleconnection pattern,
• short-term climate variation,
• Tibetan Plateau,
• surface air temperature