Atmospheric moisture shapes increasing tropical cyclone precipitation in southern China over the past four decades

Abstract

Although slower translation speed can induce a larger amount of local rainfall for an individual tropical cyclone (TC), whether change in total TC precipitation (TCP) affecting China is related to TC translation speed in the satellite era remains unclear. Based on multiple TC best-track datasets and a reanalysis dataset, we find a significant increasing trend in total TCP over two regions of southern China during 1980–2018. This upward trend can be attributed to the enhancing atmospheric water vapor content and moisture transport over southern China, however, TC intensity, frequency, and translation speed have no contributions. Given the potential linkage between the increasing atmospheric water vapor content over southern China and the western Pacific warming under global warming, our results suggest a likely role of anthropogenic global warming in the increasing TCP over southern China during the past 4 decades.

Keywords

• tropical cyclone
• precipitation
• translation speed
• water vapor content
• moisture transport