Numerical simulation of the 1999 Yangtze River valley heavy rainfall including sensitivity experiments with different SSTA

Abstract

With the IAP/LASG GOALS model, the heavy rainfall of the summer of 1999 in the Yangtze River valley is simulated with observational sea surface temperature (SST). Comparing the simulations of 1999 with the corresponding ones of 1998 and the sensitivity experiments with different sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) at different ocean regions, the relationships between the floods in the Yangtze River valley and the SSTA in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are studied. The results show that the positive SSTA in the tropical Indian Ocean are a major contributor to the heavy rainfall and may be a very important index to predict the heavy rainfall over the Yangtze River valley in the summer. The simulations also show that the relationships between the SSTA in the tropical eastern Pacific and the heavy rainfall in the Yangtze River valley are very complicated, and the heavy rainfall in the Yangtze River valley can occur in both a decaying and an intensifying El Nina event and also in a La Nina event. However, the different SSTA of different periods in the above three cases play different parts.