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Why is the mid-tropospheric North Atlantic subtropical high much stronger than the North Pacific subtropical high in boreal summer?

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Abstract

Evidence clearly shows that the mid-tropospheric North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) is much stronger than the North Pacific subtropical high (NPSH) in summer, but the mechanism is unknown. To understand the mechanism for such zonal difference between the two systems, we perform a series of sensitivity simulations using a community atmosphere model (CAM) and a linear baroclinic model (LBM). The CAM results indicate that the zonal variation of tropical sea-surface temperatures (SSTs), followed by Tibetan Plateau (TP), play leading roles in the formation of these mid-level subtropical high differences through modulating precipitation-related heating sources. The impacts of such heat sources are then investigated using the LBM. The tropical SST variation-related convective heating over the northeastern equatorial Pacific acts to enhance the NASH via exciting an eastward-propagating wave pattern resembling the Pacific-North American teleconnection; the TP-induced large-scale latent heating can also cause the NASH-NPSH difference by exciting a circumglobal teleconnection (CGT)-like wave pattern with westward-propagating part and eastward-propagating part along the westerly jet stream. Thus, their combined effect makes the NASH much stronger than the NPSH in the mid troposphere during summertime.

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source over the TP region, and the right is the vertical distribution (pressure coordinate: hPa) of the heating source at (90° E, 32° N) (red curve for TPL) and (80° E, 30° N) (blue curve for TPC). Gray contour in each panel denotes the surface elevation of 2000 m

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Data availability

The ERA5 dataset is obtained from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-pressure-levels-monthly-means?tab=form. The NCEP/DOE reanalysis dataset is available at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html. The ERA-interim dataset is derived from https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-moda/levtype=pl/, and the JRA-55 data are derived from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds628.1/#!access.

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Acknowledgements

This work is jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41975106, 41805051) and the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX21_0966). The numerical calculations were conducted on the High Performance Computing Center of the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

Funding

This work is jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41975106, 41805051) and the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX21_0966).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster/KLME/ILCEC/CIC-FEMD, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Hongli Chen, Haiming Xu, Jing Ma & Jiechun Deng

  2. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, 219 Ning Liu Road, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Hongli Chen, Haiming Xu, Jing Ma & Jiechun Deng

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  1. Hongli Chen
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Correspondence to Haiming Xu.

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Chen, H., Xu, H., Ma, J. et al. Why is the mid-tropospheric North Atlantic subtropical high much stronger than the North Pacific subtropical high in boreal summer?. Clim Dyn 59, 1883–1895 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-06074-3

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