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A preliminary study on the global land annual precipitation associated with ENSO during 1948–2000

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Abstract

The global land monthly precipitation data (PREC/L) are used to investigate the relation between the global land annual precipitation and ENSO during 1948–2000, and the results of composite analysis are tested with Monte Carlo simulations. Results indicate that the global land annual precipitation was significantly reduced in large scale areas in warm event years; the areas were the equatorial West Pacific, North China; equatorial Central America; North Bengal Bay and Nepal; East Australia; West India and South Pakistan; the district east of the Lena River; West Europe; and Wilkes Land of Antarctica. In contrast to this, the areas where precipitation increased in warm event years were less, and mainly in Chile and Argentina of South America; Somali, Kenya, and Tanzania of East Africa; Turkey, Iraq, and Iran of the Middle East; Libya and Nigeria of North Africa; Namibia of Southwest Africa; and Botswana and Zimbabwe of southern Africa. Statistical tests show that in warm event years, the area where the land annual precipitation was reduced was larger than the area where the annual precipitation increased, and the reduction in precipitation was more significant than the increase. The results in this paper are compared with previous studies. It is also pointed out that the interdecadal change of ENSO had no significant effect on the interdecadal variation of precipitation in the above regions. However, the warm events of El Nino affected the droughts in East Australia and North China more after the 1980s than before.

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Neng, S., Luwen, C. & Dongdong, X. A preliminary study on the global land annual precipitation associated with ENSO during 1948–2000. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 19, 993–1003 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-002-0060-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-002-0060-6

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