Abstract
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is rapidly warming, posing potential risks to regional to global climate and ecosystems. However, it remains ambiguous to what extent anthropogenic forcing contributes to the rapid TP warming based on observation. It is also unclear for the quantitative analysis of the anthropogenic effects on the dynamic and thermodynamic warming of the TP. Here we disentangle this issue using CN05.1 observations and a probability statistics model based on long term memory. The findings demonstrate that the anthropogenically-driven trend accelerates regional warming and is dominant for the rapid TP warming. The anthropogenically-driven warming was more than 1.2 °C in the central-western TP from 1980 to 2018, with anthropogenic contribution reaching up to ~ 60% for the observed warming (1.8–2.0 °C). Furthermore, we extract the dynamic and thermodynamic warming from the observed TP warming by dynamical adjustment method and determine the anthropogenic effect of each. The results show that anthropogenic contribution of thermodynamic warming exceeds 50% in most parts of TP, with over 70% in the southwest. The thermal effect is the main way of anthropogenic impact on the rapid TP warming.
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Data availability
The CN05.1 data are available from http://www.geophy.cn/CN/10.6038/cjg20130406. The monthly mean sea level pressure data are from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/Department of Energy Atmospheric Model Inter-comparison Project reanalysis (https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html).
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Acknowledgements
We thank the supports of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42130610, 41875096), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1502303), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41875083, 41905060, 41975091).
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42130610, 41875096), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1502303), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41875083, 41905060, 41975091).
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YW, PY and GF conceived the study. YW collected the data, performed the data analysis, made the plots, and prepared the manuscript. FJ, BH and PF provided comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Wang, Y., Yan, P., Ji, F. et al. Anthropogenic Contribution to the Rapid Warming over the Tibetan Plateau. Clim Dyn 61, 329–339 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06576-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06576-8