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Recovery of sensible heating and its elevation amplification over and around the Tibetan Plateau since 2000s

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Abstract

Based on historical observations daily data for 1981–2016 from 130 meteorological stations over and around the Tibetan Plateau (TP), the trends of sensible heat flux (SH) and their elevation dependence were investigated. Results indicate that the SH over and around the TP experienced apparent trends’ shift in approximately 2000, demonstrating noticeable reductions during 1981–2000 and pronounced recovery during 2001–2016 for the four seasons. The relation between elevations and trends in SH over and around TP has shown a feature known as “elevation amplification.” Pronounced elevation-dependent reductions in SH can be discovered for the four seasons except winter during 1981–2000, and a substantially more significant enhance in SH was found in the higher elevation plateau compared to the lower elevation plateau during 2001–2016. The elevation-dependent trends of surface wind speed (V0) influenced by the atmospheric circulation anomalies were the dominant factor driving the elevation-dependent trends of SH whenever during 1981–2000 and 2001–2016. During 1981–2000 (2001–2016), the areas to the north of TP warmed more strengthened (weaker) than the areas to the south of TP. It led to the anomalous temperature gradient and geopotential height gradient from the south (north) of TP to the north (south) of TP and resulted in decreasing (increasing) trends of the 500hPa subtropical westerlies over and around the TP. Furthermore, it caused the rate of reduction (increases) in V0 amplified with elevation, because the higher altitude areas responded more strongly to the changes of atmosphere wind speed. As a result of the elevation-dependent reductions (increases) of V0, the positive correlation between the subdued (enhanced) SH and elevation occurred in TP during 1981–2000 (2001–2016). The difference in ground-air temperature (Ts-Ta) was another factor influencing elevation dependence of SH trends during 2001–2016, which needs further investigations.

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Availability of data and material

The ERA-Interim reanalysis data can be accessed from https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-moda/levtype=pl/; the regular surface meteorological data can be accessed from http://data.cma.cn/data/cdcdetail/dataCode/SURF_CLI_CHN_MUL_DAY.html.

Code availability

All the codes are programmed by NCAR Command Language (NCL, version 6.4). The codes are available and maintained by Weiwei Fan (fanweiwei19@mails.ucas.cas.cn).

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Funding

This research has been funded by the National Program on Key Basic Research Project (2018YFC1505701), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) program (grant no. 2019QZKK0103), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20060101), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41830650, 91737205, 91837208).

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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, 730000, China

    Weiwei Fan & Zeyong Hu

  2. Land-Atmosphere Interaction and its Climatic Effects Group, State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Weiqiang Ma & Yaoming Ma

  3. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Weiqiang Ma, Zeyong Hu & Yaoming Ma

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Weiwei Fan

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  1. Weiwei Fan
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Contributions

Weiqiang Ma designed the research. Weiqiang Ma

and Weiwei Fan performed the analysis and wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Weiqiang Ma.

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Fan, W., Ma, W., Hu, Z. et al. Recovery of sensible heating and its elevation amplification over and around the Tibetan Plateau since 2000s. Theor Appl Climatol 146, 617–630 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03737-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03737-3

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