Characteristics of winter-to-winter recurrence of atmospheric temperature in the northern area of East Asia

Seasonal evolution of atmospheric temperature with winter-summer-the following winter (winter-to-winter) characteristics in the northern area of East Asia (40–50°N, 100–130°E) from 1953 to 2012 has been investigated in this paper. Results indicate that: from 2008 on, the atmospheric temperature in this area had a typical characteristic of cold winter-warm summer-the following cold winter for three consecutive years from the lower layer to the upper layer (1000–400 hPa), and the similar situation also appeared in the period from 1950s to 1960s; however, the opposite variation characteristics of warm winter-cool summer-the following warm winter happened in 1990s. This typical seasonal evolution of atmospheric temperature was defined as a new variation mechanism: winter-to-winter recurrence (WWR). The recent 60 years may be divided into four different types according to the variation of the years from 1953 to 2012: negative (positive) winter-to-winter recurrence (negative/positive WWR) and negative (positive) non winter-to-winter recurrence (negative/positive non-WWR). In the 23 WWR years the probability of occurrence was close to 40%. This WWR characteristic still exists and is independent of the variation of the El Niño southern oscillation index. The synthetic anomalies analysis of geopotential height, vertical speed, and the winter vector at 850 hPa indicates that as for the WWR pattern, the dynamic process of inner atmosphere also has WWR characteristics corresponding to the atmospheric temperature from the lower layer (1000 hPa) to the upper layer (500 hPa) while the non-WWR pattern does not have the similar characters. This study will provide a new idea to further investigate the frequent occurrence of the winter low temperature events on the background of global warming.