Summer monsoon indices on June rainfall in Hong Kong and its vicinity

Abstract

© 2016, The Chinese Meteorological Society and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Climatologically, June is usually the wettest month in Hong Kong. With significant interannual variation of the summer monsoon, the rainfall variability in June is also large. As Hong Kong is in close proximity to the peripheries of different monsoon regions, the variability of June rainfall largely depends on the relative strength of various monsoon systems. In the present study, a new index comparing the relative condition of the western North Pacific summer monsoon and the South China Sea summer monsoon is developed based on the difference between the respective monsoon indices WNPMI (western North Pacific summer monsoon index) and UMI (unified monsoon index). It is shown that June rainfall in Hong Kong and its vicinity is better correlated with this new index than either WNPMI or UMI alone. Based on the signs of the new index in conjunction with those of WNPMI and UMI, a framework to stratify the monsoon conditions into different configurations together with a simple scheme to summarize the associated rainfall responses is formulated. This study highlights how the rainfall variability on a local or regional scale can be quantified by the broad-scale conditions of different monsoon systems.