Comparisons of hot summers in the Mediterranean and North China

Abstract

In recent years, hot summers (HS) have played an important role in affecting people’s health and causing natural disasters. However, it is not very clear what HS should be attributed to. In order to investigate that, the anomalous of anticyclone associated with HS in the Mediterranean and North China is examined and compared by using data during the time period 1949~2018. Statistical analysis shows that summer temperature in the Mediterranean and North China is revealing a good correlation when removing the global warming trend. The composite results indicate that the anomalous warming during HS over different regions is both dominantly controlled by an anomalous anticyclone, which enhances the subsidence adiabatic heating of the temperature. Furthermore, the subtropical high (STH) variations faithfully represent the fluctuations in summer temperature over the Mediterranean (cor = 0.78) and North China (cor = 0.80). The anticyclonic anomalies over both focus areas are associated with North Atlantic and Northwest Pacific sea surface temperature (sst), respectively. These results indicate that the total influence of the STH position anomaly should be taken into consideration in different places during HS. However, whether such atmosphere-ocean feedback can be improved by numerical experiments is worthy to be further studied.