Abstract
In July and August (JA) 2018, the monsoon trough in the western North Pacific (WNP) was unusually strong, the anticyclonic ridge was anomalously northward-shifted, and enhanced and northward-shifted tropical cyclone activity was observed. Studies have examined the effects of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies on the North Atlantic (NA), the Indian Ocean (IO), and the tropical North Pacific. However, a synthetic view of SST forcings has yet to be identified. Based on a series of numerical experiments, this study demonstrated that the SST anomaly in the tropical WNP was the key forcing that formed the structure of the observed anomalous phenomena in the monsoon trough. Moreover, the combined effect of the SST anomaly in both the tropical and extratropical WNP resulted in enhanced circulation anomalies in the WNP. The NA SST anomaly also enhanced the monsoon trough in the presence of WNP SST anomaly. By contrast, the individual SST anomaly in the NA, IO, the extratropical WNP, and the subtropical eastern North Pacific could not force the enhanced monsoon trough. We proposed that the local effect of both the tropical and extratropical WNP SST anomaly as the major driver and the remote effect of NA SST anomaly as a minor contributor jointly induced the anomalous circulation and climate extremes in the WNP during JA 2018.
