Objective Analysis on Large-scale Circulation Type and Its Links to Precipitation over China

Atmospheric circulation anomaly is a direct cause of weather and climate change. In the past, most researches for the relationship between Weather Type (WT) and precipitation have mainly focused on the subjective classification and diagnosis. Compared to the subjective analysis, objective classification uses more consistent index and standard unification, thus, we can get more WTs, and it has been widely used in many areas. By using daily 12UTC Sea Level Pressure (SLP), Precipitable Water (PW), and 700 hPa wind speed (UV700) data from ECMWF’s Interim Reanalysis, the classification of WTs over China was performed with the method of obliquely rotated T-mode principle component analysis. WT and its link to precipitation over China were further analyzed. The results show that the influence of different WTs on precipitation is not uniform over China, and also show distinctly difference in different seasons. A common feature is that WTs great impact on the regions and months with large precipitation, while less impact on regions and months have with less precipitation. In addition, precipitation trends originating from WT intensity changes are much more deterministic, significant, and predictable than trends from WT frequency changes.