Variations of the East Asian Mei-Yu and Simulation and Prediction by the NCEP Climate Forecast System

The East Asian mei-yu (EAMY), which includes the mei-yu over eastern China, baiu over Japan, and changma over Korea, is an important component of the Asia summer monsoon system. The EAMY rain belt jumps northward to the Yangtze and Huaihe River valleys (in China), Japan, and Korea from mid-June to mid-July, with remarkable interannual variability. In this study, the variability and predictability of EAMY are investigated using the retrospective ensemble predictions of the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS). The CFS reasonably captures the centers, magnitude, northward jump, and other features of EAMY over most regions. It also reasonably simulates the interannual variations of EAMY and its main influencing factors such as the western Pacific subtropical high, the East Asian monsoon circulation, and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The CFS is skillful in predicting EAMY and related circulation patterns with a lead time of one month. An empirical orthogonal function analysis with maximized signal-to-noise ratio is applied to determine the most predictable patterns of EAMY. Furthermore, experiments in which the CFS is forced by observed sea surface temperature (SST) exhibit lower skill in EAMY simulation, suggesting the importance of ocean-atmosphere coupling in predicting EAMY. The CFS, which exaggerates the precipitation over the southern-southeastern hills of the Tibetan Plateau, overestimates the relationship between EAMY and tropical-subtropical atmospheric circulation due to the overly strong ENSO signals in the model, whereas the experiments forced by observed SST produce a weaker relationship. On the contrary, the CFS underestimates the link of EAMY to higher-latitude processes. An increase in the horizontal resolution of the CFS is expected to reduce some of these errors.