In this paper the relationships between the sea surface temperature (SST) of Xisha and that in the northern Indianand northern Pacific Oceans,the geopotential height at 500 hPa level of the Northern Hemisphere,and rainfall in Chinaare studied statistically using data in the period of 1961—1992.Results show that in winter,the interannual variation inSST of Xisha describes that for a large oceanic region off the East Asia coast,and is closely related to the activity of EastAsia winter monsoon.On the other hand,there exist very high values of auto-correlation of Xisha SST anomaly fromDecember through the following July,but the anomalous condition is hardly correlated to that in the preceding autumn.The winter monsoon related anomalous SST condition in Xisha has a strong tendency to persist through the succeedingsummer monsoon season with the same sign.In addition,correlation maps of monthly mean rainfall in China with re-spect to Xisha SST of the same month show positive correlations with confidence level above 95% to the east of 110°Eand to the south of Changjiang (Yangtze) River during the months of October through April;the region becomes smal-ler in May and changes correlation sign in June;the positive correlation region is located in the middle and lower reachesof Changjiang River from July to September.The air-sea interaction plays an important role in these processes.
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