Summary
In this paper, the thermal features of the atmosphere over the Tibetan Plateau in summer and their effects on the general circulation are reviewed. Some recent research results are reported. It is shown that the Plateau acts as a heat source in summer. Particularly the strong surface heating makes the air stratification very unstable and produces strong near-surface convergence and positive vorticity and upper layer divergence and negative vorticity. Intense convective activity generated thereby not only maintains such particular large-scale circulation pattern over the Plateau, but also transports large amounts of sensible heat, moisture, chemical pollutants, as well as air with low ozone concentration from near-surface layers to upper layers. A minimum centre of total ozone concentiation and a huge upper layer anticyclone with a warm and moist core are thus observed over the Plateau in summer. The strong divergent flow and anticyclonic vorticity source in the upper atmosphere have a strong influence on the general circulation over the world via meridional as well as longitudinal circulations, and energy, dispersion on a spherical surface. It is shown that the surface sensiole heating of the Plateau is essential for the occurrence of the abrupt seasonal change of the general circulation there, and for the persisten maintenance of the Asian monsoon. It is also reported that the elevated heating of the Tibetan Plateau together with its mechanical forcing cause the early onset of the Asian monsson to happen over the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, which then generates a favorable circulation background for the monsoon onset over the South China Sea. The Indian monsoon onset flows aftervards.
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While I visited USA in the summer of this year (97) the sad news of the death of Professor Riehl came to me. This was a great shock to me. Herb was my esteemed colleague and friend. During the later half of my stay at the University of Chicago in the 40s I spent most of the time with Herb and worked with him. Every weak we have several discussion through which I learnt a lot from him. I cannot forget our discussions in one morning. This discussion helped me to formulate a paper “The circulation of the high troposphere over China in the winter of 1945–1946” which was published in Tellus (1950). This paper demonstrated for the first time the existence of a strong jet stream around the southern periphery of Tibetan Plateau. This jet stream is usually called southern jet stream in China, because there is also a northern one to the north of the Tibetan Plateau, These two jet streams merge into one downstream of the plateau forming the stronges jet stream in the northern hemisphere. This Tellus paper and a paper by Bolin, which also appeared in Tellus (1950), stimulated my interest in studying the role of the Tibetan Plateau in the general circulation for several decades. Because of Herb's stimulation, a colleague of mine and I write this review article in the volume in memorizing Herb's big contribution to meteorology.
Because of the adoption of Pinyin in the 1960s, Yeh T. C. became Ye D.-Z
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Ye, DZ., Wu, GX. The role of the heat source of the Tibetan Plateau in the general circulation. Meteorl. Atmos. Phys. 67, 181–198 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01277509
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01277509