Traditional Meiyu-Baiu has been suspended by global warming.

More than 1000 years, the Meiyu-Baiu have shaped the uniqueness of natural resources, civilization and culture in the Yangtze River Basin of China and the main islands of Japan. In recent decades, frequent rainstorms and droughts have seemingly diminished the misty features of traditional Meiyu-Baiu rainfall. However, there is still no consensus on whether their traditional nature is suspended. In this study, we quantitatively demonstrate that the Meiyu-Baiu almost completely lost their traditional features during 1961-2023, ∼80% of which can be attributed to anthropogenic warming. Furthermore, in a warmer future, the traditional Meiyu-Baiu will be more unlikely to appear. This study underscores the urgency in adapting to climate shift because destructive extremes are measurably taking the place of mild and maternal rains.

Synergetic roadmap of carbon neutrality and clean air for China.

It is well recognized that carbon dioxide and air pollutants share similar emission sources so that synergetic policies on climate change mitigation and air pollution control can lead to remarkable co-benefits on greenhouse gas reduction, air quality improvement, and improved health. In the context of carbon peak, carbon neutrality, and clean air policies, this perspective tracks and analyzes the process of the synergetic governance of air pollution and climate change in China by developing and monitoring 18 indicators. The 18 indicators cover the following five aspects: air pollution and associated weather-climate conditions, progress in structural transition, sources, inks, and mitigation pathway of atmospheric composition, health impacts and benefits of coordinated control, and synergetic governance system and practices. By tracking the progress in each indicator, this perspective presents the major accomplishment of coordinated control, identifies the emerging challenges toward the synergetic governance, and provides policy recommendations for designing a synergetic roadmap of Carbon Neutrality and Clean Air for China.

Synergetic impacts of precursory climate drivers on interannual-decadal variations in haze pollution in North China: A review.

North China suffers from severe haze pollution and has received widespread attentions since the winter of 2012. In addition to human activities, climate variability also plays an important role, particularly in the interannual-decadal variations in the number of haze days in North China (HDNC). Many previous studies separately explored numerous preceding climate drivers, including Arctic sea ice, Eurasia snow and soil moisture, sea surface temperature in Pacific and Atlantic and forcing of Tibetan Plateau, but lacked assessment and analysis of the joint effects. In this study, we reviewed their impacts on HDNC and associated physical mechanisms. Beyond that, the synergetic effects were newly revealed by the observations and numerical experiments with fixed emissions. The preceding signals explained approximately 66% of the interannual-decadal variations in HDNC by exciting teleconnection patterns in winter and influencing the local dispersion conditions in North China. Furthermore, some future research directions were identified, such as the subseasonal variations in HDNC, subseasonal-seasonal prediction of haze by numerical climate models, and changing relationships between HDNC and climate conditions.

Future precipitation changes over China under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming targets by using CORDEX regional climate models.

This study aims to characterize future changes in precipitation extremes over China based on regional climate models (RCMs) participating in the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-East Asia project. The results of five RCMs involved in CORDEX-East Asia project that driven by HadGEM2-AO are compared with the simulation of CMA-RegCM driven by BCC-CSM1.1. Eleven precipitation extreme indices that developed by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices are employed to evaluate precipitation extreme changes over China. Generally, RCMs can reproduce their spatiotemporal characteristics over China in comparison with observations. For future climate projections, RCMs indicate that both the occurrence and intensity of precipitation extremes in most regions of China will increase when the global temperature increases by 1.5/2.0 °C. The yearly maximum five-day precipitation (RX5D) averaged over China is reported to increase by 4.4% via the CMA-RegCM under the 1.5 °C warming in comparison with the baseline period (1986-2005); however, a relatively large increase of 11.1% is reported by the multi-model ensemble median (MME) when using the other five models. Furthermore, the reoccurring risks of precipitation extremes over most regions of China will further increase due to the additional 0.5 °C warming. For example, RX5D will further increase by approximately 8.9% over NWC, 3.8% over NC, 2.3% over SC, and approximately 1.0% over China. Extremes, such as the historical 20-year return period event of yearly maximum one-day precipitation (RX1D) and RX5D, will become more frequent, with occurrences happening once every 8.8 years (RX1D) and 11.5 years (RX5D) under the 1.5 °C warming target, and there will be two fewer years due to the additional 0.5 °C warming. In addition, the intensity of these events will increase by approximately 9.2% (8.5%) under the 1.5 °C warming target and 12.6% (11.0%) under the 2.0 °C warming target for RX1D (RX5D).