Graphical Abstract

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Kamae, Y., W. Mei, and S.-P. Xie, 2017: Climatological relationship between warm season atmospheric rivers and heavy rainfall over East Asia. J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 95, 411-431.
https://doi.org/10.2151/jmsj.2017-027   Graphical Abstract with highlights

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Highlights:

• This study evaluates contribution of atmospheric rivers (ARs) to the hydrological cycle over East Asia (Fig. 1) using high-resolution daily rainfall observations and vertically integrated water vapor transport in atmospheric reanalysis.
• ARs account for 14–44% of total rainfall and 20–90% of extreme heavy-rainfall events over East Asia during warm seasons despite their low occurrence.
• AR-related extreme rainfalls are especially dominant over western-to-southeastern slopes of terrains over the Korean Peninsula and Japan, owing to strong orographic effect and a stable direction of the low-level moisture flow.
• A strong relationship between warm-season AR heavy rainfall and preceding-winter El Niño is identified since the 1970s, suggesting a high seasonal predictability of AR-related natural disaster risk over Korea and Japan.