Principal Modes of Climatological Seasonal and Intraseasonal Variations of the Asian Summer Monsoon

Abstract

Principal modes of climatological variation of the Asian summer monsoon are investigated. Data used in this study include the high cloud fraction produced by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project and sea level pressure, and 850- and 200-mb geopotential heights from ECMWF analysis for the five summers of 1985?89. It is shown that the seasonal evolution of the Asian summer monsoon is adequately described by a few leading EOFs. These EOFs capture the variations of regional rainbands over the East Asian and Indian regions. The first mode is characterized by an increase in large-scale cloud over India and the subtropical western Pacific until mid-August. The second mode depicts large-scale cloud variations associated with the East Asian rainband referred to as Mei Yu and Baiu. This mode is associated with the development of summer monsoon circulation: a low pressure system over the Asian continent and a subtropical high over the Pacific. The third eigenmode is characterized by zonal cloud bands from northern India, crossing the Korean peninsula to Japan, and dryness over the oceans in the south of cloud bands. This mode is related to the mature phase of Changma rainy season in Korea associated with the northward movement of cloud bands and circulation systems from the subtropical western Pacific. This mode appears as a first principal mode of climatological intraseasonal oscillation (CISO) over the entire Asian monsoon region. The CISO mode has a timescale of about 2 months. The northward moving CISO also appears in the 850- and 200-mb geopotential height fields as a first mode of each dataset. Based on the height variations of the CISO mode, it is suggested that the extratropical CISO during summer is related to a regional index cycle associated with the variation of north?south temperature gradient in East Asia.