THE TRANSMISSION PATH OF THE 500 hPa TEMPERATURE RESPONSE TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA SST MONTHLY ABNORMALITY IN WINTER

Abstract:

In view of the SSTA study mostly confined to summer, this work tries to take another look from the point of winter. Using a two-layer general circulation model (IAP-GCM Ⅱ)developed at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, numerical experiments are conducted to study the transmission paths of the 500-hPa response field of temperature in association with monthly winter anomalies of SST for the South China Sea. The result shows that the response field splits into two branches in transmission when the anomaly is positive-one travels counterclockwise to the north arriving in the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau via southeastern China after leaving the sea and the other goes southwards; the transmission becomes clockwise when anomaly turns negative so that it starts from the sea and passes the Bay of Thailand before, as in the case of positive anomaly, reaching the plateau. Our work has shown that the South China Sea SST is essential for the prediction of short-term climate in southeast China.