Wednesday, 19 July - 11:00 Earth System Physics Seminar

[Earth System Physics Section]

EARTH SYSTEM PHYSICS SEMINAR
Wednesday, 19 July - 11:00 hrs
Central area, 2nd floor, ex-SISSA bldg.

Lin Wang
Center for Monsoon System Research
Institute of Atmospheric Physics
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing

"Interdecadal variations of the Silk Road pattern"

Based on several reanalysis and observational datasets, this study 
suggests that the Silk Road pattern (SRP), a major teleconnection 
pattern stretching across Eurasia in boreal summer, shows clear 
interdecadal variations that explain approximately 50% of its total 
variance. The interdecadal SRP features a strong barotropic wave train 
along the Asian subtropical jet, resembling its interannual counterpart. 
Besides, it features a second weak wave train over the northern part of 
Eurasia, leading to larger meridional scale than its interannual 
counterpart. The interdecadal SRP contributes to approximately 10~20% of 
the summer precipitation’s variance and 40% of the summer surface air 
temperature’s variance over large domains of Eurasia. Especially, the 
interdecadal SRP shows two regime shifts in 1974 and 1998, respectively, 
and the latter explains over 40% of the observed rainfall reduction over 
Northeastern Asia and over 40% of the observed warming over Eastern 
Europe, West Asia, and Northeastern Asia, highlighting its importance in 
the recent decadal climate variations over Eurasia. The Atlantic 
Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) does not show significant linear 
relationship with the interdecadal SRP. However, the Monte Carlo 
bootstrapping resampling analysis suggests that the positive (negative) 
phase of spring and summer AMO facilitates the occurrence of negative 
(positive) phase of the interdecadal SRP significantly, implying 
plausible prediction potentials for the interdecadal variations of the SRP.