Diversity of the Coupling Wheels in the East Asian Summer Monsoon on the Interannual Time Scale: Challenge of Summer Rainfall Forecasting in China

Two types of three-dimensional circulation of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) act as the coupling wheels determining the seasonal rainfall anomalies in China during 1979–2015. The first coupling mode features the interaction between the Mongolian cyclone over North Asia and the South Asian high (SAH) anomalies over the Tibetan Plateau at 200 hPa. The second mode presents the coupling between the anomalous low-level western Pacific anticyclone and upper-level SAH via the meridional flow over Southeast Asia. These two modes are responsible for the summer rainfall anomalies over China in 24 and 7 out of 37 years, respectively. However, the dominant SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the North Atlantic Ocean fail to account for the first coupling wheel’s interannual variability, illustrating the challenges in forecasting summer rainfall over China.