Teleconnection between rainfall over South China and the East European Plain in July and August

Abstract

In the present reported work, we identified that there is a significant negative relationship between rainfall over South China (SC) and the East European Plain (EEP) in the months of July and August, and investigated the possible reason for this negative relationship. The correlation coefficients between SC and the EEP rainfall were calculated to be −0.42 for July and −0.35 for August, both significant at the 95 % confidence level. We report that a wave-like train of circulation anomalies and a pathway of wave-activity flux stretching from Europe to East China connect the anticyclonic anomaly over Europe and the cyclonic anomaly over central and southern China, which are responsible for less EEP rainfall and more SC rainfall. We suggest that the teleconnection between SC and EEP rainfall results from the extension of stationary Rossby waves in the mid-latitudes in the upper troposphere for both July and August. This stationary Rossby wave is contributed to by summer North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and its extension features are determined by the location and intensity of the climatological upper-tropospheric westerly jet. Furthermore, we found that there was an interdecadal change around the mid-1970s in the negative SC–EEP rainfall relationship for both July and August. The negative correlation was significant and strong in the period 1976–2005, but much weaker in the period 1955–1975. The extension of stationary Rossby waves from Europe to East China was responsible for the significant negative relationship during the period 1976–2005.