Effects of Orography on the High-Temperature Event on 22 June 2023 in North China

Abstract

An extreme high-temperature event occurred in North China on 22 June 2023, with the maximum temperature reaching 41.8 °C. The high-temperature centers preferentially occurred at the foothills of the Taihang and Yanshan Mountains, indicating an important role of the underlying orography. In the present work, we study the orographic effects of this extreme high-temperature event according to high-resolution numerical simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting model. The results show that the presence of the mountains in North China contributed notably to the high-temperature event, which can enhance the 2 m air temperature by up to 3 °C. In the daytime, the enhancement of temperature is primarily due to the diabatic heating of sensible heat flux at the terrain surface caused by solar shortwave radiation, whereas the well-known foehn effect has little contribution. Indeed, the dynamically forced downslope flow of foehn is totally suppressed by the upslope flow of the thermally driven mountain-plain circulation. In the nighttime, the sensible heat flux at the terrain surface changes to weakly negative, given the cooling of land surface longwave radiation. As a result, the enhancement of near-surface temperature at the terrain foothill is dominated by the adiabatic warming of downslope flow. Yet, the near-surface temperature far away from the mountain is enhanced by the subsidence warming of a synoptic anomalous anti-cyclone, which is induced by the diabatic heating over the mountains in the daytime. These findings help improve the understanding of the thermal and dynamical effects of orography on the occurrence of high-temperature events.