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Formation and variation of the atmospheric heat source over the Tibetan Plateau and its climate effects

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Abstract

To cherish the memory of the late Professor Duzheng YE on what would have been his 100th birthday, and to celebrate his great accomplishment in opening a new era of Tibetan Plateau (TP) meteorology, this review paper provides an assessment of the atmospheric heat source (AHS) over the TP from different data resources, including observations from local meteorological stations, satellite remote sensing data, and various reanalysis datasets. The uncertainty and applicability of these heat source data are evaluated. Analysis regarding the formation of the AHS over the TP demonstrates that it is not only the cause of the atmospheric circulation, but is also a result of that circulation. Based on numerical experiments, the review further demonstrates that land–sea thermal contrast is only one part of the monsoon story. The thermal forcing of the Tibetan–Iranian Plateau plays a significant role in generating the Asian summer monsoon (ASM), i.e., in addition to pumping water vapor from sea to land and from the lower to the upper troposphere, it also generates a subtropical monsoon–type meridional circulation subject to the angular momentum conservation, providing an ascending-air large-scale background for the development of the ASM.

摘要

值叶笃正先生诞辰100周年之际, 为了纪念他在青藏高原气象学方面的研究工作, 和创造性的开启了青藏高原气象学这一门学科的伟大贡献, 我们撰写了这篇研究综述文章, 主要回顾了对近几十年来青藏高原大气热源研究的评估工作. 这些工作基于多种资料源, 包括局地的台站观测资料, 卫星遥感资料, 和各种再分析资料. 本文指出了这些热源资料的不确定性和可用性. 对高原大气热源形成的分析表明, 热源本身不仅仅是大气环流变化的诱因, 并且它同时也是大气环流变化的结果. 基于一系列数值试验, 本文指出了海陆热力差异仅仅是亚洲夏季风形成的部分原因, 而青藏-伊朗高原的热力强迫作用对亚洲夏季风的形成具有至关重要的作用: 它不但将海洋的水汽从对流层低层抽吸到大陆上空对流层高层, 而且在角动量守恒的约束下, 它还导致了副热带经向季风环流的形成, 这给亚洲夏季风的发展提供了大尺度背景.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr. WANG Meirong for plotting Fig. 1, and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. This study was supported by the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Major Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 91637312, 91437219, 91637208, and 41530426), and the Special Program for Applied Research on Super Computation of the NSFC–Guangdong Joint Fund (second phase) (Grant No. U1501501).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Guoxiong Wu, Bian He, Anmin Duan, Yimin Liu & Wei Yu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Guoxiong Wu, Bian He, Anmin Duan & Yimin Liu

  3. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Wei Yu

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Wu, G., He, B., Duan, A. et al. Formation and variation of the atmospheric heat source over the Tibetan Plateau and its climate effects. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 34, 1169–1184 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-017-7014-5

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