Large-Scale Features Associated with the Long-Term Changes in the Asian Monsoon and ENSO

Abstract:

The Asian monsoon and ENSO are the two important systems/phenomena that exert significant impacts on the climate in and outside Asia. In the past decades, both the monsoon and ENSO have experienced long-term changes and thus their links to many climate features are different from some decades to others. This presentation addresses the features of changing climate over the South China Sea and surrounding regions that are associated with the long-term changes in monsoon and ENSO. The possible causes of these changes including the role of tropical and extratropical interaction and the possible remote influence of these changes will be discussed. For example, both the Indian Ocean warming and the Atlantic Meridional Mode have weakened the Asian monsoon, and an increase in heating over and around the South China Sea also reduces the Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Moreover, the effect of these long-term changes on short-term climate prediction will also be discussed. Because of the change in ENSO, the skills of seasonal prediction of the East Asian winter monsoon and the Southeast Asian summer monsoon tend to decrease.