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Impact of Mongolian Plateau versus Tibetan Plateau on the westerly jet over North Pacific Ocean

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Abstract

Mountains have long been considered to play an important role in the formation of modern climate. Particularly in the Asia-Pacific sector, the existence of Tibetan Plateau (TP) is believed to maintain the stationary planetary wave patterns and to intensify the westerly jet over North Pacific. However, the potential role of Mongolian Plateau (MP) has often been neglected in these studies. With an atmospheric general circulation model, we show that the MP, despite its smaller size, exerts a great influence on the planetary-scale circulation and the subtropical westerly jet. The MP amplifies the meridional thermal gradient at the mid-upper troposphere and thus strengthens the jet, which is primarily facilitated by its high-latitude location. By blocking westerly winds, the MP forces their northern branch further northward, which allows the southward penetration of cold air at the lee side, and intensifies the East Asian trough. In contrast, the impact of the TP itself is not as large as expected. Hence, one should not simply ascribe all the mountain-induced climate change to the TP uplift, because other smaller topography might be also very important.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Bette Otto-Bliesner for their constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript. This work was jointly supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB03020601), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41290255 and 41105060), National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB955904) and Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-EW-114).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Loess Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, 710075, China

    Zhengguo Shi, Xiaodong Liu, Yingying Sha & Tingting Xu

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

    Yimin Liu

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  1. Zhengguo Shi
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  2. Xiaodong Liu
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Correspondence to Zhengguo Shi.

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Shi, Z., Liu, X., Liu, Y. et al. Impact of Mongolian Plateau versus Tibetan Plateau on the westerly jet over North Pacific Ocean. Clim Dyn 44, 3067–3076 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2217-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2217-2

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