Distinct roles of Atlantic multidecadal variability and external forcings on East Asian summer precipitation

Both the Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) and external forcings are recognized as key drivers of interdecadal variations in East Asian summer precipitation. However, considerable debate persists regarding the specific contributions of the AMV and external forcings to these variations. To address this issue, we analyzed both the large ensemble historical all-forcing twentieth-century experiments and two types of North Atlantic pacemaker experiments—one with time-evolving external forcings and one with fixed 1920 forcings. Our analysis demonstrates that AMV is a dominant driver of interdecadal variations in East Asian summer precipitation. In particular, a negative AMV-like North Atlantic cooling weakened the East Asian summer monsoon, leading to the late 1960s shift through two atmospheric pathways: a mid-latitude Rossby wave train and an equatorial Kelvin wave. The external forcings have contributed to a drying trend along the Yellow and Huaihe River valley since the 1960s, when the anthropogenic forcings have been strong. The shift observed in the late 1990s, characterized by a northward migration of the precipitation belt, was driven by both the positive AMV phase and the external forcings.