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Inconsistencies of precipitation in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau between surface adjusted data and reanalysis

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Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the source of many Asian river systems and serves as “the Asian water tower”. Precipitation variability is a strong component of both hydrological processes and energy cycles, and the study of precipitation in the TP is of great importance in the content of global warming. In this study, the annual and seasonal (spring: MAM; summer: JJA; autumn: SON; and winter: DJF) variations in precipitation are investigated in the eastern and central TP during 1961–2007, based on surface raw and adjusted observations as well as both NCEP/NCAR (1961–2007) and ERA-40 (1961–2001) reanalyses. The adjusted precipitation in the TP is higher than raw values on both the annual and seasonal basis due to adjustments of solid precipitation by a bias experiential model. At the annual spring and winter scales, the adjusted precipitation shows a significant increase calculated by the Mann–Kendall trend test. Compared with adjusted precipitation; both NCEP/NCAR and ERA-40 reanalyses capture the broad spatial distributions of mean annual and seasonal precipitation, but are less good at repeating the decadal variability. Both reanalyses show the drying phenomena in most regions and fail to represent the change patterns of precipitation observed by the adjusted observations. Both NCEP/NCAR and ERA-40 have larger inconsistencies which may be caused by the differences between actual and model topography. This suggests that it is crucial to use the adjusted precipitation in the climate research and reanalysis products should be paid more attention in the TP.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported by the Global Change Research Program of China (2010CB951401), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-YW-145), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (40870743). The SSSTC project (EG76-032010 and EG23-092011) and the Chinese postdoctoral science foundation in 2011 are also appreciated. Qinglong You is supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The authors thank the National Meteorological Information Center, China Meteorological Administration (NMIC/CMA), for providing the data for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, 100085, China

    Qinglong You & Shichang Kang

  2. Meteorological Institute, KlimaCampus, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, 21044, Germany

    Qinglong You & Klaus Fraedrich

  3. Laboratory for Climate Studies, National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Beijing, 100081, China

    Qinglong You & Guoyu Ren

  4. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, CAS, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Baisheng Ye & Shichang Kang

  5. Key laboratory of Land Surface Process and Climate Change in Cold and Arid Regions, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, CAS, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xianhong Meng

Authors
  1. Qinglong You
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  2. Klaus Fraedrich
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  3. Guoyu Ren
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  4. Baisheng Ye
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  5. Xianhong Meng
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  6. Shichang Kang
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Correspondence to Shichang Kang.

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You, Q., Fraedrich, K., Ren, G. et al. Inconsistencies of precipitation in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau between surface adjusted data and reanalysis. Theor Appl Climatol 109, 485–496 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0594-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0594-1

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