Emergent Constraints on Future Projections of Tibetan Plateau Warming in Winter

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is an area highly sensitive to climate change and is warming faster than the global average. The TP temperature change has a significant impact on the local ecological environment and the downstream weather and climate. The TP will undoubtedly warm in the future, but the warming extent is uncertain. Using the Coupled Model Inter‐comparison Project Phase 6 multi‐model ensemble, we found that models simulating smaller TP temperature increases in recent decades tend to project weaker warming in the future. This relationship is driven by the simulation of snowmelt response to greenhouse gas increases, as snow‐related albedo feedback dominates the TP temperature changes in both historical and future periods. Based on a two‐step emergent constraint approach, the rectified TP warming magnitude increases by about 0.3°C compared to the unconstrained result under both the medium and high emission scenarios, and the inter‐model uncertainty is reduced by about 60%.

Constraining future surface air temperature change on the Tibetan Plateau

“…Recently, a study (Hu et al 2024) proposed a twostep emergent constraint by firstly constraining future albedo change, which contributes the most on SAT change among a set of other physical process, and then the projected SAT change is obtained according to the correlation between albedo and SAT change. Their results show a warmer SAT change than unconstrained projection in winter which corresponds with ours.…”