A possible linkage of Eurasian heat wave and East Asian heavy rainfall in Relation to the Rapid Arctic warming

• Published in: Environmental Research
• Main Authors: Nakamura, Tetsu, Sato, Tomonori
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier
• Subjects: Arctic warming; Heat wave; Heavy rainfall; Meiyu-Baiu front; Blocking high; Weather hazards; Ensemble forecast; Climate modelling; 451; Arctic; Verkhoyansk; Global warming; Siberia
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2115/86712; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2022.112881

In June-July 2020 two remarkable weather events occurred in northern Eurasia. One is a severe heat wave that produced a record-breaking temperature of 38 degrees C at Verkhoyansk, eastern Siberia on 20 June. The other one is heavy rainfall events observed in East Asia (southern China and southwestern Japan) in early July, causing severe floods that brought about considerable damage to infrastructure and the economy, as well as the loss of human lives. Despite the accumulated evidence of stronger and more extreme heat waves and heavy rainfall as a result of global warming, little is known about the linkage between these phenomena. Given that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global mean, Arctic warming might be enhancing the increase of heavy rainfall events in East Asia. Here, we investigated the relationship between the Siberian heat wave and the East Asian heavy rainfall that occurred summer in 2020. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis applied to atmospheric reanalysis data of 1958-2020 period captures dominant summer circulation patterns reflecting atmospheric internal variability and externally forced anomalies. On the basis of these EOF patterns, operational forecasts of summer 2020 using the global model from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and a global climate model experiment based on 2-K warming future projection are utilized to examine roles of the internal variability and external forcing, respectively. Consistent results between them reveal that development of the blocking high over eastern Siberia has certain impacts on rainfall anomalies over East Asia. By a statistical technique applied to the ensemble forecast data, prediction of the East Asian precipitation is improved by 10-20% of its amplitude. Our research demonstrates possibility that East Asian rainfall is being enhanced by high-latitude atmospheric circulations due to the Arctic warming even in the current climate in which the tropical warming is not yet severe. Suggestions are given that continued Arctic warming ...