Understanding the Forcing Mechanisms of the 1931 Summer Flood along the Yangtze River, the World’s Deadliest Flood on Record

Abstract

Abstract The 1931 Yangtze River flood in eastern China, which had an associated death toll of over 2 million, is regarded as one of the world’s deadliest natural disasters on record. However, due to the lack of meteorological data before the 1950s, the causes of this event are rarely investigated. Here, we combine multiple lines of evidence from recently available historical observations, reanalysis datasets, and atmospheric general circulation model simulations driven by historical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that cover the early twentieth century to reveal the physical mechanisms underlying this flood. We find that the flooding in 1931 along the Yangtze River valley was dominated by July rainfall. Although the rainfall totals in July 1931 were not the largest in history (ranking second over the past century), the totals exceeded those for many other pluvial years between 1951 and 2010 in terms of its persistence, which was associated with a steady western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH). The flooding resulted from the combined effects of tropical El Niño–related SST forcing and extratropical wave activities over the Eurasian continent. On the one hand, warm SST anomalies in the tropical Indian Ocean following an El Niño event led to the southwestward extension of the WPSH. On the other hand, the southward shift of the westerly jet due to extratropical wave activities prevented the normal northward movement of the WPSH typical in July. Additionally, the impact that the preceding springtime precipitation and soil moisture had on the summer flood of 1931 is also discussed.