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Impact of surface sensible heating over the Tibetan Plateau on the western Pacific subtropical high: A land–air–sea interaction perspective

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Abstract

The impact of surface sensible heating over the Tibetan Plateau (SHTP) on the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) with and without air–sea interaction was investigated in this study. Data analysis indicated that SHTP acts as a relatively independent factor in modulating the WPSH anomaly compared with ENSO events. Stronger spring SHTP is usually followed by an enhanced and westward extension of the WPSH in summer, and vice versa. Numerical experiments using both an AGCM and a CGCM confirmed that SHTP influences the large-scale circulation anomaly over the Pacific, which features a barotropic anticyclonic response over the northwestern Pacific and a cyclonic response to the south. Owing to different background circulation in spring and summer, such a response facilitates a subdued WPSH in spring but an enhanced WPSH in summer. Moreover, the CGCM results showed that the equatorial low-level westerly at the south edge of the cyclonic anomaly brings about a warm SST anomaly (SSTA) in the equatorial central Pacific via surface warm advection. Subsequently, an atmospheric Rossby wave is stimulated to the northwest of the warm SSTA, which in turn enhances the atmospheric dipole anomalies over the western Pacific. Therefore, the air–sea feedbacks involved tend to reinforce the effect of SHTP on the WPSH anomaly, and the role of SHTP on general circulation needs to be considered in a land–air–sea interaction framework.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Bian HE for preparing the numerical modeling results. This work was supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91337216) and the Special Fund for PublicWelfare Industry (Meteorology), administered by the Chinese Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant No. GYHY201406001) and the CAS XDA (Grant No. 11010402).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modelling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Anmin Duan & Ruizao Sun

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Anmin Duan & Jinhai He

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

    Ruizao Sun

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  1. Anmin Duan
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  2. Ruizao Sun
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  3. Jinhai He
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Correspondence to Anmin Duan.

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Duan, A., Sun, R. & He, J. Impact of surface sensible heating over the Tibetan Plateau on the western Pacific subtropical high: A land–air–sea interaction perspective. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 34, 157–168 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-016-6008-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-016-6008-z

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