Decadal modulation of East China winter precipitation by ENSO

The decadal modulation of East China winter precipitation by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is examined using both observational data and coupled global climate model simulations. The co-variability between 68-year (1948–2015) observed East China precipitation and tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) is quantified by the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. The first SVD mode relates Southeast China winter pluvial (drought) to the tropical Pacific El Niño (La Niña) SST. A comparison between two 480-year model simulations with and without ENSO suggests that ENSO can modulate both the intensity and frequency of East China winter precipitation. In the presence of ENSO, maximum precipitation anomalies over Southeast China can be increased by 50% and largely on the interannual timescale (3–6 years). It is also demonstrated that there is an asymmetry in the precipitation and circulation responses to warm and cold phases of ENSO. The responses are sensitive to the intensity of SST anomalies during El Niño, but less sensitive to SSTs during La Niña. This sensitivity, together with the decadal variations of ENSO, helps understand the observed decadal changes in the strength of the association between wintertime tropical Pacific SST and East China precipitation. The association is relatively weak during 1948–1977 when La Niña occurred more frequently, but strong during 1978–1999 when El Niño occurred more frequently. In the last 16 years (2000–2015) the association is weakest, likely due to the weakened variability of tropical Pacific SST since 2000.