Investigations on variations of the subtropical high in the Western Pacific during historic times

In this paper the 500 mb circulation field over East Asia was reconstructed by means of a stepwise regression technique, based on the relationship between summer (June to August) rainfall in China and 500 mb level heights. As a result of this study, three indices for the subtropical high, the longitude of the west border, and the latitude of the north border and intensity for the period AD 1471–1980 were extracted from reconstructed 500 mb level heights.The power spectrum analysis was carried out to investigate the variation of subtropical high indices for last 500 yr; it is shown that the prominent cycles are 22-, 36-, 55-yr and the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), among these the latter is more significant.The long-term variations of the 10 yr average 500 mb level heights and subtropical high indices are examined in relation to climate change; it was determined that the longitudinal variation of subtropical high plays an important role in the wetness variations over China.