An analysis of extreme intraseasonal rainfall events during January-March 2010 over eastern China

The precipitation over eastern China during January-March 2010 exhibited a marked intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) and a dominant period of 10-60 days. There were two active intraseasonal rainfall periods. The physical mechanisms responsible for the onset of the two rainfall events were investigated using ERA-interim data. In the first ISO event, anomalous ascending motion was triggered by vertically integrated (1000-300 hPa) warm temperature advection. In addition to southerly anomalies on the intraseasonal (10-60-day) timescale, synoptic-scale southeasterly winds helped advect warm air from the South China Sea and western Pacific into the rainfall region. In the second ISO event, anomalous convection was triggered by a convectively unstable stratification, which was caused primarily by anomalous moisture advection in the lower troposphere (1000-850 hPa) from the Bay of Bengal and the Indo-China Peninsula. Both the intraseasonal and the synoptic winds contributed to the anomalous moisture advection. Therefore, the winter intraseasonal rainfall events over East Asia in winter could be affected not only by intraseasonal activities but also by higher frequency disturbances.