VARIABILITY IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC SUBTROPICAL HIGH AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH SEA TEMPERATURE VARIATION CONSIDERING THE BACKGROUND OF CLIMATE WARMING OVER THE PAST 60 YEARS

By adopting characteristic index data for the Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) from the National Climate Center of China, U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis data, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sea surface temperature (SST) data, we studied the WPSH variability considering the background of climate warming by using a Gaussian filter, moving averages, correlation analysis, and synthetic analysis. Our results show that with climate warming over the past 60 years, significant changes in the WPSH include its enlarged area, strengthened intensity, westward extended ridge point and southward expanded southern boundary, as well as enhanced interannual fluctuations in all these indices. The western ridge point of the WPSH consistently varies with temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere, but the location of the ridgeline varies independently. The intensity and area of the WPSH were both significantly increased in the late 1980s. Specifically, the western ridge point started to significantly extend westward in the early 1990s, and the associated interannual variability had a significant increase in the late 1990s; in addition, the ridgeline was swaying along the north-south-north direction, and the corresponding variability was also greatly enhanced in the late 1990s. With climate warming, the SST increase becomes more weakly correlated with the WPSH intensity enhancement but more strongly correlated with the westward extension of the ridge point in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean in winter, corresponding to an expanding WPSH in space. In the northern Pacific in winter, the SST decrease has a weaker correlation with the southerly location of the ridgeline but also a stronger correlation with the westward extension of the ridge point. In the tropical western Pacific in winter, the correlations of the SST decrease with the WPSH intensity enhancement, and the westward extension of the ridge point is strengthened. These observations can be explained by strengthened Hadley circulations, the dominant effects of the southward shift, and additional effects of the weakened ascending branch of the Walker circulation during warm climatological periods, which consequently lead to strengthened intensities, increased areas, and southward expansions of the WPSH in summer.