The Impact of the Tibetan Plateau Warming on the East Asian Summer Monsoon—A Study of Numerical Simulation

East Asian monsoon precipitation and circulation have experienced an interdecadal change in the last 50 years that was concurrent with the changes in global SST and recent global warming. What gives rise to this long term change has been an outstanding issue. One possible cause is the change over the Tibetan Plateau. To understand the possible impact of the Tibetan Plateau surface conditions on the downstream East Asian monsoon, a suite of sensitivity experiments were performed with Hamburgs atmospheric general circulation model (ECHAM). The land surface albedo was changed in two sets of sensitivity tests so that the Tibetan Plateau land surface temperature was changed accordingly. The results show that a warmer condition over the Tibetan Plateau tends to enhance the upper tropospheric South Asia high and the westerly jet stream to its north and the Indian monsoon to its south, meanwhile the moisture transport toward East Asia increases. The changes in the precipitation pattern are featured by increasing rainfall over northwestern India and Meiyu and decreasing rainfall in the regions under the control of Pacific subtropical high and the Bay of Bengal. Preliminary diagnostic analysis suggests that the plateau warming has initially increased sensible heating and convective heating locally, which then enhanced the low-level southwest monsoon transport toward down stream of the plateau, resulting in increased precipitation and latent heat release in eastern China. The changes in the overall diabatic heating strengthen the upper-tropospheric South Asia high and downstream subtropical trough. This result may have meaningful implications for understanding the interdecadal change and future change of the East Asian summer monsoon.