Advances in understanding the changes of tropical rainfall annual cycle: a review

Abstract

Aided by progress in the theoretical understanding, new knowledge on tropical rainfall annual cycle changes under global warming background has been advanced in the past decade. In this review, we focus on recent advances in understanding the changes of tropical rainfall annual cycle, including its four distinct features: amplitude, pattern shift, phase and wet/dry season length changes. In a warming climate, the amplitude of tropical rainfall annual cycle is enhanced, more evidently over ocean, while the phase of tropical rainfall annual cycle is delayed, mainly over land. The former is explained by the wet-get-wetter mechanism and the latter is explained by the enhanced effective atmospheric heat capacity and increased convective barrier. The phase delay over land has already emerged in the past four decades. The pattern shift under warming is marked by two features: equatorward shift of the inter-tropical convergence zone throughout the year and the land-to-ocean precipitation shift in the rainy season. The former is explained by the upped-ante mechanism and/or related to the enhanced equatorial warming in a warmer world. The latter is suggested to be caused by the opposite land and ocean surface temperature annual cycle changes in the tropics. Over tropical rainforest regions such as Amazon and Congo Basin, the dry season has lengthened in the recent decades, but the fundamental reason is still unclear. Despite the notable progress of the last decade, many gaps remain in understanding the mechanism, quantifying and attributing the emergence, narrowing the inter-model uncertainty, and evaluating the impact of tropical rainfall annual cycle changes, motivating future work guided by some directions proposed in this review.