Multiscale Variability of the River Runoff System in China and Its Long-Term Link to Precipitation and Sea Surface Temperature

Abstract

Abstract This is an exploratory study to investigate the spatial and temporal characteristics of east China’s (EC) river runoff and their relationship with precipitation and sea surface temperature (SST) at the continental scale. Monthly mean data from 72 runoff stations and 160 precipitation stations in EC, covering a period between 1951 and 1983, are used for this study. The station river runoff data have been spatially interpolated onto 1° grid boxes as runoff depth based on an extracted drainage network. Comparing runoff depth with precipitation shows that seasonal variation in runoff is consistent with the development of the summer monsoon, including the delayed response of runoff in several subregions. The dominant spatial scales and temporal patterns of summer runoff and precipitation are studied with empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis and wavelet analyses. The analyses show interannual, biennial, and longer-term variations in the EOF modes. South–north dipole anomaly patterns for the first two runoff EOF’s spatial distributions have been identified. The first/second runoff principal components (PCs) are highly correlated with the second/first precipitation PCs, respectively. The summer runoff’s EOF PCs also show significant correlations with the multivariate El Niño–Southern Oscillation index (MEI) of the summer and winter months, while the summer precipitation PCs do not. Statistic analysis shows that EOF1 of runoff and EOF2 of precipitation are related to El Niño, while EOF2 of runoff and EOF1 of precipitation are related to a dipole SST anomaly over the northwestern Pacific. The interdecadal relationship between summer runoff, precipitation, and SST variability is further studied by singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis. Pronounced warming (SST) and drying (runoff) trends in first SVD PCs have been identified. These SVDs are used to reconstruct a decadal anomaly pattern, which produces flooding in part of the Chang Jiang River basin and dryness in the northern EC, consistent with observations.