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Influence of Kuroshio SST front in the East China Sea on the climatological evolution of Meiyu rainband

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Abstract

The influence of Kuroshio sea surface temperature (SST) front in the East China Sea (ECS) on the temporal evolution of climatological Meiyu rainband was investigated using a suite of high-resolution satellite observations and a reanalysis dataset from 2000 to 2011. During the northward seasonal march of Meiyu rainband from the warmer flank of the SST front to the colder flank, the climatological rainband strength weakened substantially despite large-scale environment became more conducive to intensify precipitation. A sharp reduction in occurrence frequency of precipitation with relatively shallower depth and smaller intensity was responsible for the weakening of Meiyu rainband. During the northward migration of Meiyu rainband, individual precipitation events became deeper and more intensive, and the contribution of convective precipitation to the rainband was enhanced, associated with the seasonal northward extension of high convective instability region over the ECS. The characteristics of Meiyu rainband evolution were generally supported by cloud observations. When Meiyu rainband was located on the warmer flank of the SST front, local enhanced mean surface wind convergence and variance of convergence at synoptic timescale by the warm SST of the Kuroshio favored strong surface convergence that may trigger precipitation. A detailed moisture budget analysis revealed that the major part of moisture for Meiyu precipitation was supplied by low-level wind convergence, with much smaller contribution from moisture advection. The variation of climatological precipitation associated with Meiyu northward migration depended on SST modulation of both surface evaporation and low-level moisture convergence over the ECS.

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Acknowledgements

We thank three anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions that helped improve the manuscript. Also, we are very thankful to Prof. Bin Wang at IPRC for his stimulating discussions. The QuikSCAT and ASCAT data are produced by the Remote Sensing Systems and are funded by the NASA Ocean Vector Winds Science Team. The data are available at http://www.remss.com. The TRMM 3B42 and PR data (version 7) are archived and distributed by the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC). The CloudSat data are provided by the NASA CloudSat project from their website at http://www.cloudsat.cira.colostate.edu. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41405065, 41275094, 41490643, and 41575077), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (BK20140995).

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  1. College of Atmospheric Sciences, Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, and Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nan**g University of Information Science and Technology, 219 Ning Liu Rd., Nan**g, 210044, China

    Mimi Xu, Haiming Xu & Huijun Ren

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Xu, M., Xu, H. & Ren, H. Influence of Kuroshio SST front in the East China Sea on the climatological evolution of Meiyu rainband. Clim Dyn 50, 1243–1266 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3681-2

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