The Role of Large-Scale Vegetation and Land Use in the Water Cycle and Climate in Monsoon Asia

Abstract

The Asian monsoon is well-known as a land-atmosphere-ocean system. The land-ocean heating contrast between the Tibetan Plateau and the Indian Ocean produces strong southwesterly monsoon flow across the equator, which transports huge amounts of water vapour over south, southeast and east Asia. Another water vapour channel is located from the tropical Pacific Ocean toward East and Southeast Asia. Water vapour transport from the Indian and Pacific Oceans through these two main channels plays an essential role in maintaining large-scale cumulus convection and precipitation over humid Asia, or “monsoon Asia”, which reinforces the monsoon circulation system through latent heat release. As result, a humid climate and green world dominate the eastern half of the Eurasian continent. This humid monsoon climate maintains a meridionally-oriented dense vegetation zone called the “green belt”, from tropical Southeast Asia to sub-polar Siberia, which is one of the centres of biodiversity on the Earth, and a centre of world population.

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