People can expect a warmer, drier spring as El Nino is weakening, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday.
The state-run meteorology agency summarized significant weather events in winter and gave a forecast for spring, which begins this month.
Despite the arrival of six waves of strong continental air masses between December and last month, Taiwan had a warm winter, CWA Weather Forecast Center Director Chen Yi-liang (陳怡良) said.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
“We saw frequent alternations between cold and warm weather this winter. The anticyclonic circulation was near the Indochina Peninsula and the South China Sea, making it more difficult for cold air from the north to move southward. Overall, we had a warm winter,” Chen said.
The average temperature of the nation’s 11 ground-based weather observation stations was 19.4°C, 0.7°C higher than the average winter temperature, CWA data showed.
It was the sixth-warmest winter since 1951, the data showed.
The nation’s warmest winter was in 2019, when the average temperature was 20.5°C. The coldest winter was in 1968, with an average temperature of 15.7°C.
The average rainfall recorded at the 11 weather stations this winter was 160.3mm, about 60 percent of average winter precipitation, Chen said, adding that it was the fifth-driest winter since 1951.
The wettest and driest winters occurred in 1983 and 1963, with average rainfall of 520.2mm and 111.1mm respectively.
Only 24 rainy days were recorded this winter, 12.2 days fewer than the average. It was the third-lowest number of rainy days ever recorded in Taiwan.
The highest and lowest number of rainy days in winter were recorded in 1983 and 2004, which had 48.6 and 23.3 days of rain respectively.
As the Oceanic Nino Index showed that El Nino has peaked, it is expected to weaken further, meaning temperatures and rainfall would most likely fall within the normal range in spring, Chen said.
As spring is generally drier than the other seasons, people are advised to conserve water, he added.
“We will offer another rainfall forecast before the nation enters the plum rain season in May,” Chen said.
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