EFFECT OF TROPICAL CYCLONE PRECIPITATION ON ALLEVIATING THE DROUGHT SITUATION IN THE SOUTHEAST COASTAL REGIONS OF CHINA DURING SUMMER AND AUTUMN: USING THE IMPROVED OBJECTIVE SYNOPTIC ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE

Abstract:

To quantitatively study the role of tropical cyclone precipitation (TCP) on alleviating the drought in the southeast coastal region of China (SCR) during summer and autumn, the objective synoptic analysis technique (OSAT), improved for consistency and rationality, was used to separate the TCP data on the summers and autumns of 1963–C2005 on the basis of daily precipitation data from stations and tropical cyclone best track data. After defining the season drought index, the actual drought distribution and the assumed drought distribution without TCP were acquired. The results showed that within 1 000 km from the southeast coastline of China, TCP accounted for 11.3% of natural precipitation (NP). Without TCP, the drought index in the SCR during summer would have increased from 0.2 to 0.6 or even above 1.0 in some regions whereas the drought index during autumn would have increased from 0.4 to 0.6 or above 1.2 in some regions. The impact of TCP on drought decreases progressively from the southeast coastline to the inland regions. The TCP proportion (TCPP) showed a significant negative correlation with the drought index in many regions of the southeast, and the significant region is wider in autumn than in summer. TCP relieved the drought most significantly within a range of 0–C500 km from the southeast coastline. This drought relief showed different characteristics for the interannual variability in summer and autumn, and the cross wavelet transform indicated that the impact of TCP on drought mainly lies in 2–C4-year time scales. In particular, there was a significant effect during the summers of 1977–C1985 and in the autumns following that of 1985. Therefore, TCP has indeed largely alleviated drought in the SCR during summer and autumn.