Construction of the OKJ teleconnection index

This study focuses on the construction of an index to measure Okhotsk–Japan (OKJ) teleconnection pattern that mainly occurs in early summer. There are three major results presented here. The first is that four indices were developed to describe the OKJ pattern occurring in the monthly mean height field by using one point correlation and empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. Although there is no substantial difference among them, the third OKJ index (OKJ-III) gives a better result for the OKJ pattern when correlated with height field at 500 hPa in June. Second, there exists a significant positive correlation between the East Asian monsoon index and the OKJ-III in June. The positive OKJ-III is associated with the positive anomalies of precipitation rate to the south of the Yangtze River and Northeast China in June and negative anomalies of the surface air temperature over Japan in June through August and vice versa. All of these coincide well with the features of Rossby wave propagation in OKJ pattern that were summarized in previous studies. This index that simply represents the strength of the OKJ propagation can be used as a diagnostic tool to assess East Asian summer monsoon climate, especially for the month of June. Third, the OKJ pattern can be detected by using the first principal component of the EOF analysis in June 500 hPa height field, and it accounts for large portion of the total variance. Such a strong OKJ signal was not found in the rest of the summer months, i.e., July and August. These results strongly suggest the importance of the OKJ pattern in the East Asian circulation of early summer.