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Warming over the Tibetan Plateau in the last 55 years based on area-weighted average temperature

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Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the “Third Pole” of the world, has experienced significant warming over the past several decades. Several studies have investigated the temperature change in this region, but data scarcity and the uneven distribution of meteorological stations have resulted in uncertainty concerning the warming trend. Here, we calculated a new average temperature indicator (area-weighted average temperature, T awa) to quantify the warming of the TP during the period 1961–2015 and compared it with the traditionally used arithmetic average temperature (T aa). The result shows that T awa is less sensitive to the irregular distribution and number of stations than T aa, indicating that it can produce more reliable information on temperature change. Based on annual mean T awa, the TP showed a warming rate of 0.35 °C/decade in the recent 55 years, which is higher than the corresponding rate calculated using T aa (0.30 °C/decade). Seasonal warming rates of T awa over the TP were also analyzed. Winter had the highest warming rate (0.44 °C/decade), followed by autumn, spring, and summer (0.38, 0.30, and 0.30 °C/decade, respectively). For comparison, the seasonal warming rates of T aa gave different trends (0.43, 0. 30, 0.25, and 0.25 °C/decade for winter, autumn, summer, and spring, respectively). The use of T awa indicated stronger warming trends in the spring, summer, and fall seasons (but not in winter), which is important for the impact of the climate warming on vegetation growth in this region. Both T awa and T aa showed more prominent warming at higher elevations during 1961–2015, indicating an elevation dependence of the warming trend over the TP. Since 2001, the warming rates calculated with T awa were lower than those for the previous four decades across all elevation zones, suggesting a continuing but decelerating warming tendency since the turn of the twenty-first century. This tendency was not shown in calculations using T aa, which suggested faster warming since 2001. The T awa, which is less sensitive to the number and spatial distribution of meteorological stations, provides an improved understanding of temperature changes on the TP.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41201369 and 41571418). Climate data from the meteorological stations were obtained from the National Meteorological Information Center of China Meteorological Administration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Remote Sensing, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Yongming Xu

  2. Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Canada

    Yongming Xu & Anders Knudby

  3. Institute of Environment, Energy and Sustainability, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong

    Hung Chak Ho

  4. National Meteorological Information Center, Beijing, 100081, China

    Yan Shen

  5. Beijing Municipal Climate Center, Beijing Meteorological Bureau, Beijing, 100089, China

    Yonghong Liu

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  1. Yongming Xu
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  2. Anders Knudby
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  4. Yan Shen
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  5. Yonghong Liu
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Correspondence to Yongming Xu.

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Editor: Wolfgang Cramer

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Xu, Y., Knudby, A., Ho, H.C. et al. Warming over the Tibetan Plateau in the last 55 years based on area-weighted average temperature. Reg Environ Change 17, 2339–2347 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1163-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1163-z

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