Influence of Phase Variations of Madden-Julian Oscillation on Wintertime Large-Scale Cold Events in China

Abstract

The station observations and reanalysis dataset are utilized to explore the effects of Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) on the cold extremes over the whole country of China, and the possible mechanisms from the perspective of the thermodynamics. Here, we focus on the principal modes of different phases of MJO in winter and their influences on the large scale cold events (LSCEs) that are identified firstly. The time evolution and the spatial features of LSCEs are checked for a basic insight of the LSCEs in China, of which the annual variability and regional differences are obvious among the chosen LSECs. In addition, the first (second) empirical orthogonal decomposition mode of MJO shows an opposite feature that positive values in Phases 1–3 (Phase 4–5) and negative values in Phases 5–7 (Phase 7–8), with the explanation of variance at 30.6% (26%). Furthermore, according to the threshold of ±1.5 in standardized time series of two principal components (PC1 and PC2), the events are chosen and clarified into four cases (+PC1, –PC1, +PC2 and –PC2). All the MJO-related cases present the increases of LSCEs but with regional and intensity differences. For the case of +PC1, the cold advection from higher latitudes transport to eastern Asia inducing negative temperature anomalies thereof. For the case of –PC1, besides the eastern Asian region, there still the cold advections across the Inner Mongolia regions, leaving negative anomalies over the region either. For the case of +PC2, the southward wind and the accompanied cold advection are stronger than the others affecting mostly regions in China, which leads to the more decreases of temperature. For the case of –PC2, the cold advections are weaker, resulting in the less temperature decreases over the southeastern China. Meanwhile, the tropospheric cyclonic and anti-cyclonic circulation anomalies are beneficial to the persistence of local extremes.