Centennial Variation and Mechanism of the Extreme High Temperatures in Summer over China during the Holocene Forced by Total Solar Irradiance

Abstract

Under the background of global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme climate have increased, especially extreme high temperatures. In order to correctly predict the changes in the extreme high temperatures in summer in China in this century, it is urgent to deepen the understanding of the characteristics and physical mechanisms of the extreme high temperatures in summer on the centennial timescale. Many researchers have explored the mechanism of the influences of the variability of the solar cycle on climate change, while the mechanism of the influences of the centennial variation of solar activity on climate change remains elusive. Here, we use the outputs from the Control (CTRL) experiment, Total solar irradiance and Orbital (TSI_ORB) experiment, and Orbital (ORB) experiment from Nanjing Normal University-Holocene (NNU-Hol) experiments to study the extreme high temperatures in summer in China during the Holocene. On the basis of verifying the consistency of the centennial period between the TSI (TSI_ORB minus ORB plus CTRL) experiment and the reconstructed data, we compared the centennial variation characteristics of the summer extreme high temperature in the CTRL experiment and the TSI experiment. It shows that under the modulation of total solar irradiance, the centennial spatial pattern of the summer extreme high temperatures changed from dipole mode to uniform mode, with 300-year and 500-year periodicity, compared to the influence of only internal variability. On the centennial time scale, the greatest difference is located in northeast China. The subsidence movement and the reduction of cloud cover caused by the anticyclone under the control of high-pressure lead to the increase of downward solar radiation, thus making a positive center is showed in northeast China on the impacts of total solar irradiance. Furthermore, the center of the Rossby wave train in the barotropic structure of the upper circulation related to the summer extreme high temperature significantly moves northward. This barotropic structure is composed of continuous pressure ridges from Eurasia to North America and the North Atlantic, which is conducive to the increase of the summer extreme high temperatures. Furthermore, we investigated the underlying physical mechanisms. Under the influence of total solar irradiance, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) with the same centennial cycle as extreme high temperatures lead to obvious subsidence movement and increase of radiation flux, causing an increase in extreme high temperatures over northeast China.