Atmospheric response to cold wintertime Tibetan Plateau conditions over eastern Asia in climate models

Abstract

Central Asian orography (namely the Tibetan and Mongolian plateaux) sets important features of the winter climate over eastern Asia and the Pacific. By deflecting the mid-latitude jet polewards it contributes to the formation of the Siberian high and, on the lee side, to the advection of dry cold continental air over the eastern Asian coast and the Pacific Ocean, where atmospheric instability and cyclogenesis thrive. While the mechanic forcing by the orography is assessed in a number of modelling studies, it is still not clear how near-surface temperature over the two most prominent orographic barriers of the central Asian continent – the Tibetan and Mongolian plateaux – influences the winter climate. The problem is particularly relevant in view of a well-known cold bias in state-of-the-art climate models in proximity to the Tibetan Plateau, likely related to the modelling of land processes and land–atmosphere interaction over complex orography. Here we take advantage of the large spread in near-surface temperature over the central Asian plateaux within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) to study how colder-than-average Asian plateau temperatures impact the atmospheric circulation. Based on composites of the CMIP6 models' climatologies showing the coldest Tibetan Plateau conditions, we find that such negative temperature anomalies appear to amplify the atmospheric response to orography, with an intensification of the eastern Asian winter monsoon and of the equatorward flank of the Pacific jet. The results of the CMIP6 composite analysis are supported by experiments run with an intermediate-complexity atmospheric model, forced by a similar pattern of cold surface temperatures over the central Asian plateaux. Within this setting, the relative influence of the Tibetan and the Mongolian Plateau surface conditions is analysed. Based on the results reported in this work we project that advances in the modelling of the land energy budget over the elevated regions of central Asia could improve the simulation of the climate in the Asian–Pacific sector climate, together with the reliability of climate projections and the performance of shorter-term forecasts.