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Impact of the leading atmospheric wave train over Eurasia on the climate variability over the Tibetan Plateau during early spring

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Abstract

The great potentials of unique spatiotemporal characteristics of springtime precipitation and surface air temperature over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) act as a new source of predictability to improve the climate prediction in the TP and neighboring areas, and less attention has been paid in the variations of them on monthly timescale. In this study, the structure, maintenance mechanism of the March Leading Eurasian Wave Train (LEWT), and its impact on the TP during 1980–2018 were investigated using reanalysis and meteorological observation data and a General Circulation Model (GCM). The positive interaction between synoptic-scale eddies and the mean flow in its upstream portion and the trapped effect of the climatological subtropical jet waveguide both play important roles in propagating and maintaining LEWT. During the positive phase of the LEWT, the barotropic energy conversion process over the southeastern TP can efficiently extract kinetic energy from climatological mean flow and further maintain the lower tropospheric southwesterly winds and northeasterly winds. As a result, the intensified (weakened) moisture transport, anomalous ascending (descending) motion and resultant above-normal (below-normal) precipitation appear on the western (southeastern) TP. Moreover, the anomalous warm high located over the southeastern TP causes pronounced surface air temperature warming through hydrostatic balance. GCM simulations further verify that the wave propagation from the North Atlantic and Western Europe to the southeastern TP can significantly influence the TP climate. The results would provide theoretical references for accurate climate prediction and aid the prevention of natural disasters over the TP.

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Data availability

The ERA5 data are available from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu. The JRA-55 data are available from https://rda.ucar.edu. The GPCC data are available from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/gpcc-global-precipitation-climatology-centre. The meteorological observation data provided by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) are available from http://www.nmic.cn.

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Acknowledgements

We thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and helpful suggestions, which helped us to improve our paper. The authors are grateful for the availability of GCM from the website of https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models.

Funding

This research was supported jointly by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 91937302, 91837208, 42075043 and 42122034), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZKK0103), the Strategic Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant NO. XDA2006010101) and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Process and Climate Change in Cold and Arid Regions, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

    Yaoxian Yang, Zeyong Hu & Haipeng Yu

  2. Nagqu Station of Plateau Climate and Environment, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nagqu, Xizang, China

    Yaoxian Yang, Zeyong Hu & Haipeng Yu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yimin Liu & Jinxiao Li

  4. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yimin Liu

  5. Collaborative Innovation Center for Western Ecological Safety, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Yongkun Xie

  6. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

    Qian Yang

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  1. Yaoxian Yang
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  2. Yimin Liu
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  3. Zeyong Hu
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All the authors made contributions to the conceptualization of this work. Yaoxian Yang did analyses and drafted the work, others revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yimin Liu.

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Yang, Y., Liu, Y., Hu, Z. et al. Impact of the leading atmospheric wave train over Eurasia on the climate variability over the Tibetan Plateau during early spring. Clim Dyn 60, 3885–3900 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06525-5

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