Summertime atmospheric teleconnection pattern associated with a warming over the eastern Tibetan Plateau

By using a surface air temperature index (SATI) averaged over the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP),investigation is conducted on the short-term climate variation associated with the interannual air warming(or cooling) over the TP in each summer month. Evidence suggests that the SATI is associated with a consistentteleconnection pattern extending from the TP to central-western Asia and southeastern Europe. Associatedrainfall changes include, for a warming case, a drought in northern India in May and June, and a strongermei-yu front in June. The latter is due to an intensified upper-level northeasterly in eastern China anda wetter and warmer condition over the eastern TP. In the East Asian regions, the time-space distributionsof the correlation patterns between SATI and rainfall are more complex and exhibit large differences frommonth to month. Some studies have revealed a close relationship between the anomalous heating over the TPand the rainfall anomaly along the Yangtze River valley appearing in the summer on a seasonal mean time-scale,whereas in the present study, this relationship only appears in June and the signal's significance becomesweaker after the long-term trend in the data was excluded. Close correlations between SATI and the convectionactivity and SST also occur in the western Pacific in July and August: A zonally-elongated warm tone in theSST in the northwestern Pacific seems to be a passive response of the associated circulation related to awarm SATI. The SATI-associated teleconnection pattern provides a scenario consistently linking the broadsummer rainfall anomalies in Europe, central-western Asia, India, and East Asia.