The heterogeneity of Meiyu rainfall over Yangtze–Huaihe River valley and its relationship with oceanic surface heating and intraseasonal variability

Abstract

Increasing heavy concentrated Meiyu precipitation over the Yangtze–Huaihe river valley (YHRV) during recent years has been previously reported. In fact, the concentrated Meiyu rainfall occurring in a small region or a certain period easily results in floods, thus it is worthy to analyze the heterogeneity of Meiyu rainfall over YHRV. In this study, we use both of precipitation concentration period (PCP) and precipitation concentration degree (PCD) based on vector analysis to identify the heterogeneity of Meiyu rainfall over YHRV. On the climatological mean, the concentrated heavy precipitation occurs in late summer over the Yangtze River Delta, where is usually suffered by floods. The dominant two patterns of PCP and PCD variations are northeast–southwest dipole pattern, homogeneous anomalies and homogeneous variation, north–south dipole pattern, respectively. In addition, the relationship on heterogeneity of Meiyu rainfall with sea surface temperature (SST) and the low level summer intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) are investigated. Two key regions of SST activities are found: Bay of Bengal (BOB) and Equatorial eastern Pacific. From BOB, more abundant water vapor has been brought. On the El Nino-Southern Oscillation variation, it is closely relative with PCD–PC1 during the decaying phase of El Nino, while PCP–PC2 is accompanied with developing phase of La Nina events, suggesting a negative feedback of PCP–PC2 on the Nino3.4 SST, and changes to positive during the later winter. On the ISO activities, the robust regions are located over the high-latitude areas, which are closely related with northeastern cold vortex. The north “cold and dry” air southwardly invaded with the lower-level strong warm air in the rainy area, and easily formed an “upper-wet and lower-dry” unstable layer. Under the trigger of the upward motion, the concentrated heavy rainfall easily occurred over YHRV. In all, the homogeneity variation of the concentrated heavy precipitation over YHRV is closely associated with both of the heating forcing (SST) and dynamical atmospheric forcing (low-level ISO).