Inter‐decadal variation of the summer precipitation in East China and its association with decreasing Asian summer monsoon. Part I: Observed evidences

Abstract In recent two decades, North and Northeast China have suffered from severe and persistent droughts while the Yangtze River basin and South China have undergone much more significant heavy rainfall/floods events. This long‐term change in the summer precipitation and associated large‐scale monsoon circulation features have been examined by using the new dataset of 740 surface stations for recent 54 years (1951–2004) and about 123‐yr (1880–2002) records of precipitation in East China. The following new findings have been highlighted: (1) One dominating mode of the inter‐decadal variability of the summer precipitation in China is the near‐80‐yr oscillation. Other modes of 12‐yr and 30–40‐yr oscillations…