Abstract
The Taiwan Low (T. L.) rises on the East China Sea near Taiwan Island in late winter and early spring, and often brings about considerable precipitation passing over the Pacific Ocean to the south of Japan. It is one of the important phenomena of winter climate of Japan, mainly influenced by winter-monsoon. In this paper, the distribution of precipitation brought about by the T. L. is studied in relation to its location and passage.
The results are summarized as follows;
1) The T. L. travels eastward mainly along two tracks: the northern corresponds almost with the current of Kuroshio, while the southern with the Pacific Polar frontal zone in winter (Fig. 1).
2) During the passage of the T. L. along the northern track, the T. L. is influential upon the South coast of Japan, but when it passes along the southern track it is little effective on Japan (Fig. 3).
3) The precipitation area brought about by the T. L. moves from west to east with its travelling eastward. The ordinary monsoonal precipitation pattern, appearing on the coast of Japan Sea in winter, is not seen during the passage of the T. L., and recovered after the T. L. reached further eastward (Fig. 4).
4) Three distinct patterns are found in Kii Peninsula, from the view point of large scale analysis of the regional distribution in precipitation brought about by the T. L. They have close connection to the location of the T. L. respectively and they are changeable one another as the T. L. passing by (Fig. 6, 7).
