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Observational relationships between summer and winter monsoons over East Asia. Part I: Basic framework
Author(s) -
Wu M. C.,
Chan J. C. L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.1132
Subject(s) - monsoon , climatology , subtropical ridge , subtropics , east asian monsoon , period (music) , geography , east asia , environmental science , tropical monsoon climate , china , geology , precipitation , meteorology , physics , archaeology , fishery , acoustics , biology
This paper is the first of a two‐part study to investigate the possible relationships between summer and winter monsoons over East Asia during the period 1958 to 1999. It documents the approach employed in the study. Assuming the existence of relationships, the central theme of the study is to answer the questions: Is there evidence for the relationships and, if so, what are the relationships? In particular, the approach used to interpret the available evidence to make inferences about the conditions of the summer monsoon is described. Six winter monsoon categories are defined in terms of the monsoon strength and the conditions of the El Niño–southern oscillation. The conditions of the summer monsoons preceding and following each winter monsoon category are assessed to identify the possible summer‐to‐winter monsoon and winter‐to‐summer monsoon relationships respectively. Summer monsoons are classified into unlikely strong (notS) or unlikely weak (notW) according to the bias in the relative occurrence of positive and negative anomalies of several summer monsoon indices. The rainfall condition over China and the characteristics of the subtropical high are also used to provide supplementary evidence for the summer monsoon strength and to describe the accompanying synoptic situations. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.