A stratospheric precursor of East Asian summer droughts and floods.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38172117.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-44445-y and PMC identifier 10764360.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
East Asian floods and droughts in summer show a typical dipole pattern with a north-south oscillation centered near 30°N, called the southern drought-northern flood (SDNF) pattern, which has caused significant economic losses and casualties in the past three decades. However, effective explanations and predictions are still challenging, making suitable disaster prevention more difficult. Here, we find that a key predictor of this dipole pattern is the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO, tropical winds above 10 km). The QBO can modulate precipitation in East Asia, contributing the largest explained variation of this dipole pattern. A QBO-included statistical model can effectively predict summer floods and droughts at least three months in advance and explain at least 75.8% of precipitation variation. More than 30% of the SDNF pattern is attributed to the QBO in July-August 2020 and 2021. This result suggests a good prospect for using the tropical mid- to upper atmosphere in seasonal forecasts for summer.