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A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Climatology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2023) | Viewed by 16801

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Dr. Zhiqiang Gong

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Guest Editor

Laboratory for Climate Studies, National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: climate extreme events; climate prediction model prediction assessment; dynamic-statistic combined prediction; error correction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Gang Huang

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Guest Editor

State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
Interests: monsoon; climate prediction; IOD; ENSO
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Dr. Chao Li

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Guest Editor

School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Interests: detection and attribution; weather and climate extremes; physics of global warming; climatology statistics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Weather and climate extremes can cause meteorological disasters, and have tremendous impacts on societies and economies. As Earth’s climate warms, more frequent and more intense extreme events have unfolded across the world. Critically evaluating the capability of state-of-the-art dynamic models for near-term extreme event predictions that operate on sub-seasonal to decadal time scales, as well as for long-term extreme event projections that operate on multidecadal to centurial scales, is important for identifying and addressing challenges in understanding and modeling physical mechanisms relevant to weather and climate extremes. This will in turn facilitate the diagnosis of the causative processes producing recent singular extreme events such as atmospheric circulations, water vapor divergence, and teleconnections, and the development of more skillful prediction techniques for near-term extreme events. It will also benefit the long-term projections of extreme events by improving our understanding about how much, how quickly, whether and to what extent the recent changes in the frequency and intensity of different weather and climate extremes are associated with human climate warming. As such, a synthesis of recent progresses in forecasting China’s weather and climate extremes through sub-seasonal to multidecadal scales, diagnosing physical processes producing recent singular extreme events, and attributing the role of long-term human climate warming is important for China’s resilience and adaptation to climate extremes in a warming world.

Dr. Zhiqiang Gong
Prof. Dr. Gang Huang
Dr. Chao Li
Guest Editors

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Keywords

climate extreme events
climate prediction
climate extreme events attribution
extreme rainfall events
extreme warm events
extreme drought events
diagnosing
external forces
model prediction assessment
dynamic–statistic combined prediction
error correction
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Published Papers (11 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 6192 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Index Analysis of Spatiotemporal Variations of Dry Heat Waves and Humid Heat Waves in China

by Li Li, Lei Wang, Tao Feng, Jie Tang, Jinhai Huang and Zelin Cai

Atmosphere 2023, 14(11), 1660; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14111660 - 06 Nov 2023

Viewed by 855

Abstract

Heat waves, particularly humid heat waves that occur together with high temperatures and humidity, pose a severe hazard to human health in the context of global warming. In this work, daily observations from more 1500 sites are used to define dry and humid heat waves in a warm season (May to September) and assess their spatiotemporal characteristics during 1960–2015. Dry heat waves are identified with daily maximum temperatures, while humid heat waves are identified based on the wet bulb temperature, derived from both temperature and humidity. We compare dry and humid heat waves from various aspects based on multiple heat wave indices, including their frequency, duration, and intensity. Results suggest that the occurrence of both dry and humid heat wave days in China is higher in the southern than in the northern part of China, due to the higher air temperature and humidity therein. Compared to dry heat waves, humid heat waves are of higher amplitude but shorter duration. The long-term trend analysis shows that the occurrence of both dry and humid heat waves has increased overall over the last 50 years, with an especially rapid increase in the last 20 years, which may be related to China’s rapid warming since the late 1980s. The future projections with multiple global climate models indicate that China will experience more frequent, stronger, and longer-duration dry and humid heat waves in the future, under both intermediate and high-emission pathways. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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17 pages, 8667 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Drought Monitoring of Spring Maize in the Songnen Plain Using Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data

by Zhifang Pei, Yulong Fan and Bin Wu

Atmosphere 2023, 14(11), 1614; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14111614 - 27 Oct 2023

Viewed by 751

Abstract

Agricultural production is highly susceptible to the impact of drought. How to improve agricultural drought-monitoring capability has always been a research hotspot. Based on multi-source remote-sensing data, a novel comprehensive drought index (CDI) for spring maize was developed using the random forest model, and its feasibility was tested by using agricultural drought indices and agricultural statistics in this study. Then, the spatiotemporal characteristics of spring maize drought in the Songnen Plain from 2001 to 2018 were evaluated using the CDI. The results showed that: (1) the CDI effectively monitored spring maize drought in the Songnen Plain, outperforming other drought indices. (2) The monitoring results indicated that spring maize in the Songnen Plain was affected by large-scale droughts in 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2017, which was consistent with national drought disaster statistics. (3) By changing the drought barycenter, the drought barycenter of spring maize generally tended to the south and west of the Songnen Plain, so drought-prevention measures should be strengthened in these areas in the future. While factors affecting crop yield extended beyond drought, the variations in spring maize yield indirectly reflected the effectiveness of drought monitoring in this study. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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13 pages, 5125 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysis of Water Vapor Transport and Trigger Mechanisms for Severe Rainstorms Associated with a Northeast China Cold Vortex in 2022

by Pengyu Hu, Zuowei Xie, Tianjiao Zhou and Cholaw Bueh

Atmosphere 2023, 14(9), 1363; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14091363 - 29 Aug 2023

Viewed by 674

Abstract

Rainstorms always occur in the southeast and northeast quadrants of the Northeast China Cold Vortex (NCCV), resulting in significant flooding. This study investigated water vapor and trigger mechanisms for rainstorms within these two regions of an NCCV event during 11–14 June 2022 in terms of Lagrangian backward tracking, stratification stability, and upward motion using the ERA5 reanalysis. In the mid-troposphere, a quasi-stationary “ridge-NCCV-ridge” pattern resided over northeastern China, with an “anticyclonic-cyclonic-anticyclonic” airflow in the lower troposphere. As a result, water vapor originated from the Yellow Sea and was transported in an “L” shape toward both two regions. The southeast region was influenced by southwesterly and northwesterly airflows, resulting in the convergence of moist air from the Yangtze River and Lake Baikal and significant vertical shear of positive vorticity advection. This dynamic created deep and pronounced upward currents in the southeast of the NCCV, leading to the development of intensive and extensive rainstorms in situ. In contrast, the northeast region of the NCCV was dominated by southerly airflow. The moist air converged against the lee side of the Great Khingan Mountains and generated shallow, unstable stratification. The upward motion in this area was relatively weaker and thus induced regional rainstorms. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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14 pages, 7383 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Temporal Variabilities of Extreme Precipitation over Central Asia and Associated Planetary-Scale Climate Modes

by Wei Tang, Fang Xiao and Sheng Lai

Atmosphere 2023, 14(8), 1300; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14081300 - 17 Aug 2023

Viewed by 725

Abstract

Arid- and semi-arid Central Asia is particularly sensitive to climate change. The changes in extreme precipitation in Central Asia stemming from climate warming are the subject of intense debate within the scientific community. This study employed a Morlet wavelet analysis to examine the annual occurrence number of extreme precipitation in Central Asia from May to September during the period of 1951–2005. Their modulating planetary-scale climate modes were identified by using linear regression analysis. Two major scales of the temporal variability were derived: 2–3.9 years and 4–6 years. The dominant variability was a 2–3.9-year scale and was associated with the negative phase of the Polar/Eurasia (POL) pattern. The 4–6-year scale provided a secondary contribution and was closely linked to the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). These planetary climate modes acted as precursors of extreme precipitation over Central Asia. The negative phase of POL directly contributed to a negative height anomaly over Central Asia, which was intimately related to extreme precipitation. In contrast, the negative NAO phase possibly manifested as a Rossby wave source, which was subsequently exported to Central Asia through a negative–positive–negative Rossby wave train. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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18 pages, 10898 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Centennial Variation and Mechanism of the Extreme High Temperatures in Summer over China during the Holocene Forced by Total Solar Irradiance

by Lu Liu, Weiyi Sun, Jian Liu and Lingfeng Wan

Atmosphere 2023, 14(8), 1207; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14081207 - 27 Jul 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1445

Abstract

Under the background of global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme climate have increased, especially extreme high temperatures. In order to correctly predict the changes in the extreme high temperatures in summer in China in this century, it is urgent to deepen the understanding of the characteristics and physical mechanisms of the extreme high temperatures in summer on the centennial timescale. Many researchers have explored the mechanism of the influences of the variability of the solar cycle on climate change, while the mechanism of the influences of the centennial variation of solar activity on climate change remains elusive. Here, we use the outputs from the Control (CTRL) experiment, Total solar irradiance and Orbital (TSI_ORB) experiment, and Orbital (ORB) experiment from Nanjing Normal University-Holocene (NNU-Hol) experiments to study the extreme high temperatures in summer in China during the Holocene. On the basis of verifying the consistency of the centennial period between the TSI (TSI_ORB minus ORB plus CTRL) experiment and the reconstructed data, we compared the centennial variation characteristics of the summer extreme high temperature in the CTRL experiment and the TSI experiment. It shows that under the modulation of total solar irradiance, the centennial spatial pattern of the summer extreme high temperatures changed from dipole mode to uniform mode, with 300-year and 500-year periodicity, compared to the influence of only internal variability. On the centennial time scale, the greatest difference is located in northeast China. The subsidence movement and the reduction of cloud cover caused by the anticyclone under the control of high-pressure lead to the increase of downward solar radiation, thus making a positive center is showed in northeast China on the impacts of total solar irradiance. Furthermore, the center of the Rossby wave train in the barotropic structure of the upper circulation related to the summer extreme high temperature significantly moves northward. This barotropic structure is composed of continuous pressure ridges from Eurasia to North America and the North Atlantic, which is conducive to the increase of the summer extreme high temperatures. Furthermore, we investigated the underlying physical mechanisms. Under the influence of total solar irradiance, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) with the same centennial cycle as extreme high temperatures lead to obvious subsidence movement and increase of radiation flux, causing an increase in extreme high temperatures over northeast China. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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14 pages, 3023 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Drought in Northwest China Based on SPEI Analysis

by Yongqin Peng, Tao Peng and Yan Li

Atmosphere 2023, 14(7), 1188; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14071188 - 23 Jul 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1039

Abstract

Drought has a direct impact on regional agricultural production, ecological environment, and economic development. The northwest region of China is an important agricultural production area, but it is also one of the most serious areas of water shortage due to drought and little rain. It is of great significance to make full use of agricultural resources to clarify the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of the drought regime in Northwest China. Based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), this paper used the methods of Mann–Kendall non-parameter trend, mutation test, and Morlet wavelet analysis to explore the drought characteristics in Northwest China from 1961 to 2017. The results showed that the spatial distribution of SPEI on annual and seasonal scales differed slightly in different regions, but from northwest to southeast, the distribution was generally wetter to drier. The drought intensity (S_ij) had a step-like distribution with a range of 1.14–1.98. Based on S_ij analysis, the frequency of drought in Northwest China was moderate, followed by extreme drought, severe drought, and light drought. The inter-annual drought station proportion (P_j) ranged from 7.4% to 84.1%. A total of 25, 18, 7, and 5 years of pan-regional drought, regional drought, partial region drought, and local drought occurred, respectively, based on P_j analysis. Moreover, from the whole study period, the regional drought changes tended to cause humidification to different degrees. The results of Morlet wavelet analysis showed that there were multiple time scales of 33–52, 11–19, and 4–7 years of SPEI in the entire time domain, and dry and wet trends occurred. The results of the present research can provide a reference for the efficient utilization of water resources, drought monitoring and early warning, drought prevention, and drought relief in Northwest China. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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12 pages, 2680 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of Rainstorm Events in Southwest China from 1961 to 2021

by Yujia Liu, Jie Liao and Yufei Zhao

Atmosphere 2023, 14(7), 1134; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14071134 - 10 Jul 2023

Viewed by 867

Abstract

The rainfall distribution in southwest China is uneven, and the rainstorm threshold cannot use in a unified standard. This paper synthesizes a calculation method for the extremely heavy precipitation threshold and the provision of the rainstorm threshold in meteorological operation. It calculates the daily precipitation rainstorm threshold at 400 national ground stations in southwest China. The rainstorm events from 1961 to 2021 were statistically analyzed using the rainstorm threshold and analyzing the spatial-temporal variation characteristics. The results show that the number of single-station rainstorm events and the average precipitation of single-station rainstorm events in southwest China decreased from east to west. The number and frequency of single-station rainstorm events in Guizhou, Sichuan, Tibet, and Chongqing are increasing, while the number of single-station rainstorm events in Yunnan is decreasing. There is no apparent spatial distribution pattern for the continuous rainstorm events in the southwest region. From 1961 to 2021, the number and frequency of rainstorm events at a single station in southwest China followed an upward trend. The number of rainstorm events at a single station increased by 16.7 times · (10a)⁻¹, and the frequency of rainstorms increased by 9.9% · (10a)⁻¹. The continuous rainstorm events show an increasing trend, with an increase of 0.1 times · (10a)⁻¹. Using the rainstorm threshold in southwest China, the early warning threshold for rainstorm disasters can be adjusted. The temporal and spatial characteristics of rainstorm events since 1961 can analyze the changes occurring in rainstorm events under global warming and provide data to support the response of southwest China to climate change. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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15 pages, 4459 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Urban Snow Disasters in Xinjiang over the Last 60 Years

by Hui Wang, Siyan Dong, Meixia Wang, Xingjie Yu, Shengli Wang and Jing Liu

Atmosphere 2023, 14(5), 802; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14050802 - 28 Apr 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1064

Abstract

Based on the daily observations from 83 meteorological stations in Xinjiang between 1961 and 2020, urban snow disasters were divided into four grades: extremely severe, severe, medium and light. The patterns in the spatiotemporal variability of snow disasters and the relationship between snow disasters and the Northern Hemisphere circulation indices are discussed. The results show that snow disasters were more frequent in the north than in the south, and severe and extremely severe snow disasters mainly occurred in the north. Over the past 60 years, the frequency of medium and above snow disasters has been increasing significantly, while the frequency of light disasters has been decreasing significantly. The areas with significant changes are mainly located in the snow-rich area of Northern Xinjiang. The above changes were more evident during 1991–2020 and occurred in more than 70% of the whole area. Compared to the previous 30 years, the annual average, the maximum and minimum frequency of snow disasters classified as medium and above increased. This is especially true for severe and extremely severe disasters, which increased by more than 70%. Severe and extremely severe snow disasters in the north are significantly and positively correlated with the Northern Hemisphere Polar Vortex Central Intensity Index (NHPVCI), the India-Burma Trough Intensity Index (IBTI) and negatively correlated with AO during the cold season and the winter. Severe snow disasters in the south are positively correlated with the IBTI during winter and autumn. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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16 pages, 9180 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Influence of Madden–Julian Oscillation on Precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau in Boreal Summer

by Lina Bai, Hong-Li Ren, Yuntao Wei, Yuwen Wang and Bin Chen

Atmosphere 2023, 14(1), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14010070 - 30 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1787

Abstract

The influence of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) on precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) during boreal summer is investigated using observational and reanalysis data during 1980–2020. The results show that summer precipitation over most areas of the eastern TP increases (decreases) in MJO Phases 1–2 (5–6), especially when the eastward-propagating MJO active convection is located over the Indian Ocean (Western Pacific) in Phase 2 (6). The most significant negative precipitation anomalies in Phase 4 (8) are located over the southern (northeastern) TP. Moreover, MJO has a relatively weakened effect on the TP summer precipitation in Phases 3 and 7 when its convection migrates to the eastern Indian Ocean and the western–central Pacific, respectively. The MJO-phase dependence of the TP summer precipitation anomalies is closely associated with the anomalous atmospheric circulation and evolution of the horizontal moisture flux convergence directly induced by MJO. When the MJO convection centers are located over the western Indian Ocean and the Pacific, high-level anticyclonic and low-level cyclonic anomalous circulations over the TP are excited. In contrast, when MJO locates over the Indian Ocean and the Maritime Continent, its diabatic heating can inspire high-level cyclonic and low-level anticyclonic circulation anomalies over the TP. The vertical motions and moisture transport from the Bay of Bengal caused by the MJO-excited large-scale circulation can modulate the TP summer precipitation. This study advances the understanding of the TP intraseasonal variability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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15 pages, 5563 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Deep Learning Model and Its Application to Predict the Monthly MCI Drought Index in the Yunnan Province of China

by Ping Mei, Jiahui Liu, Changzheng Liu and Jiannan Liu

Atmosphere 2022, 13(12), 1951; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13121951 - 23 Nov 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4438

Abstract

The Yunnan province of China is a typical humid region but with several severe region-wide droughts. Drought indices are generally used to identify and characterize drought events, and then play a key role in drought prediction. Therefore, a novel prediction model was proposed to predict a comprehensive drought indicator (meteorological composite index, MCI) in Yunnan province. This model combined the recurrent neural networks (RNN) based on a gated recurrent neural unit (GRU) and convolutional neural networks (CNN) with optimization using the modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. In this model, pre-processed predictor data were input into the GRU module to extract the time features of the sequences. Furthermore, the feature matrices were input into the CNN module to extract the deep local features and the inter-relationship of the predictors. The model was trained and used to predict the monthly MCI drought index of the representative five stations of Yunnan province from 1960 to 2020. The combined model was evaluated by comparison with traditional machine learning models such as the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and random forest (RF), and the traditional GRU model. The results show significantly improved skills in root mean square error, mean absolute error and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient. This novel method was valuable for the monthly drought prediction in Yunnan province and related climate-risk management. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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15 pages, 5904 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Performance of S2S Models on Predicting the 21.7 Extreme Rainfall Event in Henan China

by Xiaojuan Wang, Shuai Li, Li Liu, Huimin Bai and Guolin Feng

Atmosphere 2022, 13(9), 1516; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13091516 - 17 Sep 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2168

Abstract

Extreme rainfall may cause meteorological disasters and has tremendous impact on societies and economics. Assessing the capability of current dynamic models for rainfall prediction, especially extreme rainfall event prediction, at sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) scale and diagnosing the probable reasons are quite important topics in the current climate study field. This study analyzes the formation mechanisms of the extreme rainfall event during 18–22 July 2021 in Henan Province and introduces the Tanimoto Coefficient (TC) to evaluate the prediction performance of S2S models. The results show that confrontation between low-latitude typhoon “In-Fa” and subtropical highs leads to sufficient water vapor transporting to Henan, and that remarkable upward air motion causes strong convergence of water vapor, thereby providing atmospheric conditions for this extreme rainfall event. Furthermore, five S2S models showed limited capability in predicting this extreme rainfall event 20 days in advance with the TCs of four models being below 0.1. Models could capture this event signal 6 days ahead with most TCs above 0.2. The performances of model prediction for this extreme rainfall event were closely related to the fact that the water vapor convergence, vertical movements, relative vorticity, and geopotential height predicted by the NCEP model 20 days ahead were close to the actual situation, in contrast to the other four models 6 days in advance. This study implies that S2S model predictions for this extreme rainfall event show obvious differences, and the application of S2S models in the prediction of extreme events needs to fully consider their prediction uncertainties. The capability of the models to properly reproduce local water vapor convergence and vertical motions is also shown to be crucial for correctly simulating the extreme event, which might provide some hints for the further amelioration of models. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes in China)

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