Significant relationship between spring AO and the summer rainfall along the Yangtze River

The influence of spring AO on the summer rainfall along the Yangtze River is investigated. The long-term rainfall observations are filtered to remove the low-frequency variations longer than 10 years. The inter-annual components show a high correlation to AO in the last hundred years. The strongest correlation appears for May AO and summer rainfall with a value of ?0.39, significant above the 99% confidence level. Associated with one standard deviation stronger May AO index, the rainfall over the Yangtze River to the southern Japan decreases by about 3%-9%, while, at the same time increases by about 3%-6% in the northern China and far-eastern Russia. The coherent changes in rainfall are significantly related to the East Asian summer jet stream in the upper troposphere. When there is stronger AO in spring, the jet stream tends to move polarward in summer, and leads the rainfall-belt to move northward too. That gives rise to a drier condition in the Yangtze River valley, wetter anomalies in northern China. This signal would be helpful for the summer rainfall prediction in China.