Search Results
You are looking at 1 - 2 of 2 items for
- Author or Editor: Rijin Wan x
- Refine by Access: All Content x
Abstract
This paper attempts to provide some new understanding of the mechanical as well as thermal effects of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) on the circulation and climate in Asia through diagnosis and numerical experiments. The air column over the TP descends in winter and ascends in summer and regulates the surface Asian monsoon flow. Sensible heating on the sloping lateral surfaces appears from the authors’ experiments to be the major driving source. The retarding and deflecting effects of the TP in winter generate an asymmetric dipole zonal-deviation circulation, with a large anticyclone gyre to the north and a cyclonic gyre to the south. Such a dipole deviation circulation enhances the cold outbreaks from the north over East Asia, results in a dry climate in south Asia and a moist climate over the Indochina peninsula and south China, and forms the persistent rainfall in early spring (PRES) in south China. In summer the TP heating generates a cyclonic spiral zonal-deviation circulation in the lower troposphere, which converges toward and rises over the TP. It is shown that because the TP is located east of the Eurasian continent, in summertime the meridional winds and vertical motions forced by the Eurasian continental-scale heating and the TP local heating are in phase over the eastern and central parts of the continent. The monsoon in East Asia and the dry climate in middle Asia are therefore intensified.
Abstract
This paper attempts to provide some new understanding of the mechanical as well as thermal effects of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) on the circulation and climate in Asia through diagnosis and numerical experiments. The air column over the TP descends in winter and ascends in summer and regulates the surface Asian monsoon flow. Sensible heating on the sloping lateral surfaces appears from the authors’ experiments to be the major driving source. The retarding and deflecting effects of the TP in winter generate an asymmetric dipole zonal-deviation circulation, with a large anticyclone gyre to the north and a cyclonic gyre to the south. Such a dipole deviation circulation enhances the cold outbreaks from the north over East Asia, results in a dry climate in south Asia and a moist climate over the Indochina peninsula and south China, and forms the persistent rainfall in early spring (PRES) in south China. In summer the TP heating generates a cyclonic spiral zonal-deviation circulation in the lower troposphere, which converges toward and rises over the TP. It is shown that because the TP is located east of the Eurasian continent, in summertime the meridional winds and vertical motions forced by the Eurasian continental-scale heating and the TP local heating are in phase over the eastern and central parts of the continent. The monsoon in East Asia and the dry climate in middle Asia are therefore intensified.
Abstract
The annual-mean position errors (PE) of tropical cyclone (TC) track forecasts from three forecast agencies [WMO Regional Specialized Meteorological Center in Tokyo (RSMC-Tokyo), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), and Joint Typhoon Warning Center of the United States (JTWC)] are analyzed to document the past improvements and project future tendency in track forecast accuracy for TCs in the western North Pacific. An improvement of 48 h (2 days) in lead time has been achieved in the past 30 years, but with noticeable stepwise periods of improvements with superposed short-term fluctuations. The stepwise improvement features differ among the three forecast agencies, but are highly related to the development of objective forecast guidance and the application strategy. As demonstrated by an exponential model for the growth of PEs with lead time for TCs of tropical storm category and above, the improvements in the past 10 years have mainly been due to the reduction in analysis errors rather than the reduction in the error growth rate. If the current trend continues, a further 2-day improvement in TC track forecast lead times may be projected for the coming 15 years up to 2035, and we certainly have not reached yet the limit of TC track predictability in the western North Pacific.
Abstract
The annual-mean position errors (PE) of tropical cyclone (TC) track forecasts from three forecast agencies [WMO Regional Specialized Meteorological Center in Tokyo (RSMC-Tokyo), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), and Joint Typhoon Warning Center of the United States (JTWC)] are analyzed to document the past improvements and project future tendency in track forecast accuracy for TCs in the western North Pacific. An improvement of 48 h (2 days) in lead time has been achieved in the past 30 years, but with noticeable stepwise periods of improvements with superposed short-term fluctuations. The stepwise improvement features differ among the three forecast agencies, but are highly related to the development of objective forecast guidance and the application strategy. As demonstrated by an exponential model for the growth of PEs with lead time for TCs of tropical storm category and above, the improvements in the past 10 years have mainly been due to the reduction in analysis errors rather than the reduction in the error growth rate. If the current trend continues, a further 2-day improvement in TC track forecast lead times may be projected for the coming 15 years up to 2035, and we certainly have not reached yet the limit of TC track predictability in the western North Pacific.
