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Relative importance of tropical SST anomalies in maintaining the Western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone during El Niño to La Niña transition years

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Abstract

This study investigates the relative importance of tropical Indian Ocean warming (IOW) and equatorial central to eastern Pacific cooling (EPC) in sustaining an anomalous Western North Pacific anticyclone (WNPAC) during the transition from an El Niño in the preceding winter to a La Niña in the subsequent summer through a suite of numerical experiments. The numerical results indicate that the WNPAC is maintained by a combined effect of IOW and EPC during the La Niña developing years. The contribution of IOW in maintaining the WNPAC sustains from spring to early summer, but appears to weaken after that as IOW decays. The role of IOW is via an eastward-propagating Kelvin wave induced Ekman divergence mechanism. The decay of IOW is because of reduction in downward solar radiation associated with above normal precipitation in situ. As the cooling develops over central to eastern Pacific from spring to summer, EPC starts to contribute to the maintenance of the WNPAC during summer through stimulating a Rossby wave response to its northwest. In this study, we have identified that the cooling over the central to eastern Pacific plays an important role in sustaining the WNPAC during La Niña developing summers. This finding may help improve the prediction of the East Asian summer monsoon, which is closely associated with the WNPAC.

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Acknowledgments

This research was jointly supported by National Key Basic Research and Development Projects of China (2014CB953901), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41175076) and State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather opening project. RW acknowledges the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants (41275081 and 41475081). ZC acknowledges the support of the high-performance grid computing platform of Sun Yat-sen University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Monsoon and Environment Research and Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Zesheng Chen, Zhiping Wen, Xiaobin Lin & Jiabao Wang

  2. Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, China

    Renguang Wu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zhiping Wen

  4. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change, Nanjing, China

    Zhiping Wen

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  1. Zesheng Chen
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  2. Zhiping Wen
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  4. Xiaobin Lin
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  5. Jiabao Wang
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Correspondence to Zhiping Wen.

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Chen, Z., Wen, Z., Wu, R. et al. Relative importance of tropical SST anomalies in maintaining the Western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone during El Niño to La Niña transition years. Clim Dyn 46, 1027–1041 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2630-1

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