Abstract
Long-duration extreme cold events in China were often characterized by strong simultaneous high-pressure anomalies (SHA) over the Ural and the North Pacific regions, e.g., 2018. It is unclear how human activity and the SHA influenced the long-duration extreme cold events in China, respectively. Herein, we investigated variations in such long-duration cold events during the past 60 years and contributions of human activity and the related atmospheric circulation pattern. Results show since 2008, the coldest periods in each winter in eastern China have become colder than those in the 1980s and 1990s, which caused an enlarging temperature difference between China and the Northern Hemisphere. We found that an increase in SHA resulted in the cold events colder and longer than a single high anomaly, through a combined reinforcing effect on the high-latitude ridges and a blocking effect on eastward movement of the East Asian trough. The UHA dominates the intensity of cold events, while the PHA modulates the duration of cold air. Comparative analysis indicated that, the enhanced SHA offsets part of the anthropogenic warming effect, resulting in extreme cold events still occurring in warm winters. And strong SHA can increase the probability of the strong cold events to about twice that with weak SHA. It is meaningful to deeply understand variations of cold events under global warming.
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Data availability
The data of this study are either openly available. All observational and reanalysis are available from the sources referenced in Sect. 2.1. Simulation data are archived at the Met Office and are available for research purposes through the JASMIN platform (www.jasmin.ac.uk) maintained by the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA).
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Funding
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42075040, 41930967 and U1902209), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA23090102), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFC1510400).
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LZ designed research, wrote original draft and contributed to data curation; WD designed research, performed research and wrote original draft; XZ designed research and contributed to reviewing the manuscript; XS, YD QL and YH contributed to reviewing the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zhao, L., Dong, W., Shen, X. et al. Human activity and simultaneous high-pressure anomalies influence the long-duration cold events of winter in China. Clim Dyn 61, 2765–2781 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06719-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06719-5