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. 2021 Aug 31;38(12):2010–2022. doi: 10.1007/s00376-021-1086-y

The Anomalous Mei-yu Rainfall of Summer 2020 from a Circulation Clustering Perspective: Current and Possible Future Prevalence

Robin T Clark 1,✉, Peili Wu 1, Lixia Zhang 2,3, Chaofan Li 4
PMCID: PMC8407136  PMID: 34483428

Abstract

Highly unusual amounts of rainfall were seen in the 2020 summer in many parts of China, Japan, and South Korea. At the intercontinental scale, case studies have attributed this exceptional event to a displacement of the climatological western North Pacific subtropical anticyclone, potentially associated Indian Ocean sea surface temperature patterns and a mid-latitude wave train emanating from the North Atlantic. Using clusters of spatial patterns of sea level pressure, we show that an unprecedented 80% of the 2020 summer days in East Asia were dominated by clusters of surface pressure greater than normal over the South China Sea. By examining the rainfall and water vapor fluxes in other years when these clusters were also prevalent, we find that the frequency of these types of clusters was likely to have been largely responsible for the unusual rainfall of 2020. From two ensembles of future climate projections, we show that summers like 2020 in East Asia may become more frequent and considerably wetter in a warmer world with an enhanced moisture supply.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s00376-021-1086-y.

Key words: circulation clustering, mei-yu front, 2020 summer rainfall, climate projections

Electronic Supplementary Material to

376_2021_1086_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (3.6MB, pdf)

The Anomalous Mei-yu Rainfall of Summer 2020 from a Circulation Clustering Perspective: Current and Possible Future Prevalence

Acknowledgements

Robin CLARK and Peili WU were supported by the UK-China Research & Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund. Lixia ZHANG was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 42075037 and the Innovative Team Project of Lanzhou Institute of Arid Meteorology (GHSCXTD-2020-2). Chaofan LI was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1506005).We also acknowledge useful discussions with Gill MARTIN during the manuscript preparation.

Footnotes

Article Highlights

• Summer 2020 was dominated to an unprecedented extent, by clusters of days of surface pressure greater than normal in the South China Sea.

• The prevalence of positive surface pressure anomalies over the South China Sea is a potentially useful proxy of such events in the future.

• According to model projections, summers of circulation clusters in China, similar to those of 2020 may become more frequent in the future.

• Projections also suggest potentially large rainfall increases in China in future years when circulation is similar to that of 2020.

This paper is a contribution to the special issue on Summer 2020: Record Rainfall in Asia—Mechanisms, Predictability and Impacts.

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Supplementary Materials

376_2021_1086_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (3.6MB, pdf)

The Anomalous Mei-yu Rainfall of Summer 2020 from a Circulation Clustering Perspective: Current and Possible Future Prevalence

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