Investigation of hydrological variability in the Korean Peninsula with the ENSO teleconnections

Sunkwon Yoon,Taesam Lee

doi:10.5194/piahs-374-165-2016

Sunkwon Yoon, Taesam Lee

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-374-165-2016

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Abstract

Abstract. This study analyzes nonlinear behavior links with atmospheric teleconnections between hydrologic variables and climate indices using statistical models during warm season (June to September) over the Korean Peninsula (KP). The ocean-related major climate factor, which is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was used to analyze the atmospheric teleconnections by principal component analysis (PCA) and a singular spectrum analysis (SSA). The nonlinear lag time correlations between climate indices and hydrologic variables are calculated by Mutual Information (MI) technique. The nonlinear correlation coefficients (CCs) by MI were higher than linear CCs, and ENSO shows a few months of lag time correlation. The warm season hydrologic variables in KP shows a significant increasing tendency during the warm pool (WP), and the cold tongue (CT) El Niño decaying years shows a significant decreasing tendency, while the La Niña year shows slightly above normal conditions, respectively. A better understanding of the relationship between climate indices and streamflow, and their local impacts can help to prepare for the river discharge management by water managers and scientists. Furthermore, these results provide useful data for policy makers and end-users to support long-range water resources prediction and water-related policy.

Highlights

The changing of global climate characteristics has induced more frequent extreme climate events, which are closely related to the seasonal variations of regional water resource variabilities (Wang et al, 2000; Pizarro and Lall, 2002; Yoon, 2015)
Phenomena through the physical model is only possible in limited geographical areas, as predicting involves considerable difficulties
This study analyzed non-linear behavior links of the atmospheric teleconnections between hydrologic variable and climate indices using statistical models

Summary

Introduction

The changing of global climate characteristics has induced more frequent extreme climate events, which are closely related to the seasonal variations of regional water resource variabilities (Wang et al, 2000; Pizarro and Lall, 2002; Yoon, 2015). The effect of local hydro-meteorological long-term changes do not occur independently and their correlations appear to be based on large-scale circulation pattern changes. It can be predicted a teleconnection based abnormal sea surface temperature (SST), and its nonlinear climate systems behavior in ocean-related climate indices such as the El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Tropical Pacific Ocean (TPO) region (Piechota and Dracup, 1996; Piechota et al, 1998; Klein et al, 1999). Based on many studies on ENSO, which is major sources of atmospheric large-scale environmental changes, it is well known that they are closely correlated to seasonal variations of local hydrological pattern changes such as precipitation and streamflow (McPhaden et al, 2006)

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