Impact of Nonuniform Land Surface Warming on Summer Anomalous Extratropical Cyclone Activity Over East Asia

As one of the typical midlatitude synoptic-scale disturbances, extratropical cyclones (ECs) can exert significant impacts on the atmospheric general circulation through its interaction with the time mean flow. Under the background of global warming, the Eurasian continent exhibits evident nonuniform warming, which has the potential to alter the atmospheric baroclinicity by changing the meridional temperature gradient and further affect the ECs activity. In this study, we investigated the possible connection between the land surface thermal anomaly over Eurasia and the summer ECs activity over East Asia together with relevant mechanisms. We found that the land surface warming (cooling) near 50 degrees N of East Asia is associated with anomalous weak (strong) summer ECs activity over East Asia. Warm (cool) land surface usually reduces (increases) the meridional temperature gradient and further the atmospheric baroclinicity in the key area of cyclone activity, resulting in low (high) frequency of the extratropical cyclogenesis and weakened (intensified) ECs activity. The land surface warming (cooling) can also depress (benefit) the associated baroclinic conversion between the time mean effective potential energy and eddy effective potential energy, resulting in decrease (increase) in the eddy kinetic energy. As a result, the energy obtained by the synoptic-scale eddy from the time mean flow has been reduced (increased), which favors (hampers) the extratropical cyclogenesis, causing weak (strong) cyclone activity in the middle latitude of East Asia.