More frequent summer heat waves in southwestern China linked to the recent declining of Arctic sea ice

Abstract

Southwestern China (SWC) has suffered from increasing frequency of heat wave (HW) in recent summers. While the local drought-HW connection is one obvious mechanism for this change, remote controls remain to be explored. Based on ERA-5 reanalysis, it is found that the SWC summer HWs are significantly correlated with sea-ice losses in the Barents Sea, Kara Sea and the Arctic pole. The reduction of Arctic sea ice can cause low pressure anomalies over the polar region due to increased heat-flux exchanges at the sea-air interface, which subsequently triggers southeastward Rossby wave trains propagating from northern Europe to East Asia that induce anomalous anticyclone over SWC. As a result, the North Pacific subtropical high extends westward, accompanied by divergent winds, decreased cloud cover and increased insolation in SWC, which leads to above-normal air temperatures there. In addition, the East Asian westerly jet stream is shifted northward, which enhances (reduces) the moisture convergence in North China (SWC), resulting in prominently drier soil in SWC. Therefore, the sea ice—forced changes in atmospheric circulation and surface conditions favor the occurrences of SWC summer HWs.