Abstract
By using ERA-Interim data, the temperature anomaly of the freezing rain and snowstorm event that occurred from 11 to 22 January 2008 in southern China was analyzed. During this period, diabatic heating and temperature advection caused the temperature to increase anomalously over the Tibetan Plateau. The anomalously high temperature moving from the Tibetan Plateau to southern China played several roles. First, the upper-level subtropical jet over China was split into two parts in the north–south direction, which affected the development of freezing rain in southern China; second, a ridge formed because of the warmer air moving to China, which hindered the transport of cold air from its upstream blocking high, forced the cold air to gather behind the ridge, and facilitated the severe cold air outbreak in the later period of the event; third, an inversion layer formed because of the lower-level cold air and upper-level warmer air over southern China, which was conducive to the development of the event over southern China; and finally, because of the temperature anomaly, opposite wind directions appeared at the lower levels (below 700 hPa), which helped transport of warm-moist and cold-dry air to the event area.
Highlights
In January and early February 2008, extraordinarily frequent and long-lasting snowstorms affected China
The aim of the present study is to investigate the possible impacts of Tibetan Plateau warming on this snowstorm/freezing rain event of 2008 during the first two stages
The temperature anomaly was enhanced over the west of the Tibetan Plateau
Summary
In January and early February 2008, extraordinarily frequent and long-lasting snowstorms affected China. Employing MM5 to simulate the same snowfall event, Sun and Zhao (2003) found that a fast-moving short trough in the middle- and low-level backflows behind a blocking high was necessary conditions for the formation of the snowfall Freezing rain is another type of severe weather common in China, where it tends to occur from November to March, and mostly in January (accounting for 72% of total occurrence). Using theoretical approaches and numerical models, both Chinese and overseas researchers have investigated the underlying mechanisms for heavy snowstorms and freezing rain These investigations have concentrated more on the local background and weather systems, and less on the effects of systems in the upstream regions (e.g., systems caused by large-scale topography such as the Tibetan Plateau). Possible physical interpretations of the Tibetan Plateau warming are presented in Section 4, and the final Section 5 provides conclusions and discussion
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