East Asian countries experienced record-breaking heat waves and drought conditions during the summer monsoon season of 1994. This study documents the large-scale circulation associated with the drought and suggests a forcing mechanism responsible for the anomalous evolution of the East Asian monsoon. The results, based on Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) global assimilated data for 1985–94, indicate that the absence of monsoon rainfall during July 1994 over central China and the southern parts of Korea and Japan is due to the unusually early development of the climatological upper-level anticyclonic flow east of the Tibetan Plateau. The anomalous July anticyclonic circulation over the East Asian–northwestern Pacific region and the cyclonic circulation over the subtropical western Pacific, which are more typical of August, acted to reduce the moisture supply from the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean leading to suppressed rainfall over East Asia. The similarity of the July 1994 East Asian ... Abstract East Asian countries experienced record-breaking heat waves and drought conditions during the summer monsoon season of 1994. This study documents the large-scale circulation associated with the drought and suggests a forcing mechanism responsible for the anomalous evolution of the East Asian monsoon. The results, based on Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) global assimilated data for 1985–94, indicate that the absence of monsoon rainfall during July 1994 over central China and the southern parts of Korea and Japan is due to the unusually early development of the climatological upper-level anticyclonic flow east of the Tibetan Plateau. The anomalous July anticyclonic circulation over the East Asian–northwestern Pacific region and the cyclonic circulation over the subtropical western Pacific, which are more typical of August, acted to reduce the moisture supply from the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean leading to suppressed rainfall over East Asia. The similarity of the July 1994 East Asian ...