Regional and tele-connected impacts of the Tibetan Plateau surface darkening

Abstract

Despite knowledge of the presence of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in reorganizing large-scale atmospheric circulation, it remains unclear how surface albedo darkening over TP will impact local glaciers and remote Asian monsoon systems. Here, we use a coupled land-atmosphere global climate model and a glacier model to address these questions. Under a high-emission scenario, TP surface albedo darkening will increase local temperature by 0.24 K by the end of this century. This warming will strengthen the elevated heat pump of TP, increasing South Asian monsoon precipitation while exacerbating the current “South Flood-North Drought” pattern over East Asia. The albedo darkening-induced climate change also leads to an accompanying TP glacier volume loss of 6.9%, which further increases to 25.2% at the equilibrium, with a notable loss in western TP. Our findings emphasize the importance of land-surface change responses in projecting future water resource availability, with important implications for water management policies.

Regional and Teleconnected Impacts of Solar Radiation‐Topography Interaction Over the Tibetan Plateau

“…Accounting for such interaction in E3SM shows reduced cold biases over the whole TP (Figure 2) especially in winter, which is in line with Lee et al (2019) and Fan et al (2019). The interaction is expected to affect the glacier evolution over the TP by accelerating glacier melt and retreat (Tang et al, 2023). Radiation-topography interaction over the TP could further affect the East and South Asian climate.…”

Anomalously Darker Land Surfaces Become Wetter Due To Mesoscale Circulations

“…(2019), and Tang et al. (2023)). At mesoscales ( O (10 km)), many studies have examined the impacts of an albedo anomaly on precipitation in the context of deforestation (Chagnon & Bras, 2005; Negri et al., 2004; Taylor et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2000), which causes coincident anomalies in albedo, surface roughness, and vegetation.…”

Decreased Western Tibet Snow Cover Amplifies the Increase in Summer Concurrent Compound Heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere

“…There is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that, in addition to the thermodynamic mechanisms associated with the increased baseline temperature due to global warming 11,13,14 , concurrent climate extremes are closely linked to changes in quasi-stationary atmospheric Rossby waves [15][16][17][18][19] . For example, an ampli ed hemisphere-wide wavenumber 7 circulation pattern caused simultaneous extreme heat events in North America, Europe, the Caspian Sea, and Japan during the summer of 2018 9,11,13,20 .…”

“…Furthermore, TP snow can regulate atmospheric circulation variability by coupling with other external forcing factors, such as SST and Arctic sea ice, thus in uencing the broader climate system 44,48,49 . Consequently, snow over the TP is a critical indicator for climate prediction and is considered an ampli er of global climate change 19,44,50 . In recent decades, the snow cover (SC) over the TP has experienced signi cant decreasing trends due to global warming 51,52 , which coincides with the increasing CHWs during this period, yet the relationship between them is still unclear.…”