U.S. flag An official website of the United States government.
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

i

Frequent floods in the Yangtze River basin linked to a shifted Indian Ocean wave regime



Details

  • Journal Title:
    Nature Communications
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
  • Description:
    Six major summer monsoon floods occurred in the Yangtze Basin during 1992–2024 compared to only one during 1960–1991. This significant increase in hydroclimatic extremes, which affected millions of people, is closely linked to a 50% enhancement in quasi-biennial variability in East Asian summer monsoon rainfall and associated Yangtze River discharge. This quasi-biennial variability is strongly coupled with intensified tropical baroclinic wave activity in the Indian Ocean under enhanced ENSO forcing. During the later period, amplified westward propagating downwelling baroclinic Rossby waves in late boreal spring and summer strongly suppressed vertical mixing and entrainment in the western tropical Indian Ocean, maintaining anomalously warm sea surface temperatures. This anomalously warm ocean enhanced local atmospheric convection and tropospheric heating, which remotely strengthened the western Pacific subtropical high via atmospheric Kelvin wave processes, thereby increasing moisture transport and summer monsoon rainfall over the Yangtze River Basin. A 70% increase in the phase speed of the baroclinic Rossby waves during the later period also favoured the seasonal phase locking of ocean wave–driven tropical Indian Ocean warming with the East Asian summer monsoon.
  • Source:
    Nature Communications, 17(1)
  • DOI:
  • ISSN:
    2041-1723
  • Format:
    PDF
  • Publisher:
    Springer Science and Business Media LLC
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • License:
  • Rights Information:
    CC BY-NC-ND
  • Compliance:
    Submitted
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:16edb7a502422b1dadeeb187d9725933f862d408736741ba087efb47d643b53850bf99ff18018daed8b15fed1409a45ca1699e8e7602c977df635761f15d7ea2
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 8.51 MB ]
PREVIOUS
ON THIS PAGE
Details
The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
BACK TO TOP