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Recent years have witnessed contrasting trends in summer total rainfall (STR) over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), with an increase in the northern and a decrease in the southern TP. This study identifies four significant centers of rainfall trends: eastern TP (“region A”), Qiangtang Plateau (“B”), Qaidam Basin (“C”), and the northern foothills of the Himalayas (“D”). Heavy rainfall dominates STR trends in regions A and D, accounting for 55.6% and 52.0%, respectively. In region B, moderate and light rainfall contribute almost equally, accounting for 37.3% and 44.8% of the STR trend, respectively. Region C is primarily influenced by light rainfall, explaining 71.2% of the STR trend. Notably, the contributions of different rainfall intensities to STR in each region vary annually, with region A experiencing more heavy rainfall, region B having moderate dominance but less light rainfall, and region C and D showing reduced and increased light rainfall contributions, respectively. Mechanistically, the strengthening of the upper-level westerly jet and the South Asian High, coupled with changes in moisture transport and convective available potential energy, collectively cause variations in rainfall intensity, characterizing the spatial heterogeneity in STR in the TP.

The northward shift of the Western North Pacific Subtropical High (WNPSH) in July 2018 broke the historical record since 1958 and resulted in extreme heat waves and casualties across Northeast Asia (NEA). In the present work, we associated this extreme WNPSH anomaly with the anomalies of barotropic anticyclone above NEA originating from the strongest positive tripole pattern of sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) in the North Atlantic in July. Both data analysis and numerical experiments indicated that the positive tripole SSTA pattern could produce an upper-tropospheric wave source over Europe, which stimulated an eastward propagating wave train along the subpolar westerly jet over the Eurasian Continent. When its anticyclonic node reached NEA, the WNPSH started to shift northward. After the cyclonic node in the circulation anomaly encountered the Tibetan Plateau (TP), atmospheric diabatic heating was enhanced over the eastern TP, initiating another subtropical wave train, which furthered the northward shift of the WNPSH. Therefore, the wave source over Europe was critical for the northward shift of the WNPSH in July, connecting the tripole SSTA pattern in the North Atlantic with the WNPSH anomaly and maintaining the downstream effects of thermal forcing over the eastern TP on the East Asian summer monsoon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews progress in the study of Tibetan Plateau (TP) climate dynamics over the past decade. Several theoretical frameworks, including thermal adaptation and the TP sensible heat (SH) driving air-pump, have been developed to identify the mechanisms responsible for the circulation anomaly produced by thermal forcing of the TP. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the thermal effects of large-scale orography, including the Tibetan and Iranian Plateaus (TIP), are crucial for the formation of the East Asian and South Asian summer monsoons (SASM) because the surface SH of the TIP is the major driver of the water vapor transport required for the genesis of the north branch of the SASM.The large-scale orography of the TP affects the Asian climate through thermal forcing in spring and summer, and mechanical forcing in winter. The TP forcing can also influence the Asian summer monsoon (ASM) onset over the Bay of Bengal (BOB) by enhancing the BOB warm pool at the surface and by modulating the South Asian High (SAH) in the upper troposphere. On intra-seasonal timescales, the TP thermal forcing significantly modulates spring rainfall in southern China and generates the biweekly oscillation of the SAH in summer. Despite climate warming, the atmospheric heat source over the TP, particularly the spring SH, exhibits a clear weakening trend from the 1980s to 2000s. This weakening of the spring SH contributed to the anomalous 'dry in the north' and 'wet in the south' rainfall pattern observed over East China. Also discussed are challenges to further understanding the mechanism of TP forcing on the multi-scale variability of the ASM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]