scholarly journals Quantification of Evaporative Sources of Precipitation and Its Changes in the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau and Middle Yangtze River Basin

Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Xu ◽  
Yanhong Gao

The Southeastern Tibetan Plateau (SETP) and the Middle Yangtze River Basin (MYRB) show a large difference in their levels of precipitation, despite the fact that they are located within the same latitude band. The annual precipitation in the MYRB is much higher than in the SETP. Precipitation has decreased in the past three decades in both regions. To clarify the difference in precipitation and its changes between these two regions in recent decades, a quasi-isentropic backward trajectory (QIBT) model is used to track the evaporative source with the ERA-Interim reanalysis as the baseline. The wet seasons (from April to September) over the period of 1982–2011 were analyzed. Evaporative sources were divided into an oceanic portion and a terrestrial portion, in which local recycling was included. Our conclusions are as follows. A terrestrial evaporative source, including a neighboring terrestrial land source and local source, dominates both regions, although the summer monsoon regulates precipitation in the wet season. The local precipitation recycling ratio is 35% in the SETP and 29% in the MYRB. The oceanic evaporative source in the MYRB is five times larger than that in the SETP. The decrease in the oceanic evaporative source in the Indian Ocean is responsible for the decrease in precipitation in the SETP. In the MYRB, decreases in neighboring terrestrial sources dominate the precipitation decline. Regardless of the decreases in the remote oceanic or neighboring terrestrial evaporative sources, the local recycling ratio increased in both regions.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomang Liu ◽  
Tiantian Yang ◽  
Koulin Hsu ◽  
Changming Liu ◽  
Soroosh Sorooshian

Abstract. On the Tibetan Plateau, the limited ground-based rainfall information owing to a harsh environment has brought great challenges to hydrological studies. Satellite-based rainfall products, which allow a better coverage than both radar network and rain gauges on the Tibetan Plateau, can be suitable observation alternatives for investigating the hydrological processes and climate change. In this study, a newly developed daily satellite-based precipitation product, termed Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks–Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR), is used as input of a hydrologic model to simulate streamflow in the upper Yellow and Yangtze River Basin on the Tibetan Plateau. The results show that the simulated streamflow using PERSIANN-CDR precipitation is closer to observation than that using limited gauge-based precipitation interpolation in the upper Yangtze River Basin. The simulated streamflow using gauge-based precipitation are higher than the streamflow observation during the wet season. In the upper Yellow River Basin, PERSIANN-CDR precipitation and gauge-based precipitation have similar good performance in simulating streamflow. The evaluation of streamflow simulation capability in this study partly indicates that PERSIANN-CDR rainfall product has good potentials to be a reliable dataset and an alternative information source besides the sparse gauge network for conducting long term hydrological and climate studies on the Tibetan Plateau.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomang Liu ◽  
Tiantian Yang ◽  
Koulin Hsu ◽  
Changming Liu ◽  
Soroosh Sorooshian

Abstract. On the Tibetan Plateau, the limited ground-based rainfall information owing to a harsh environment has brought great challenges to hydrological studies. Satellite-based rainfall products, which allow for a better coverage than both radar network and rain gauges on the Tibetan Plateau, can be suitable alternatives for studies on investigating the hydrological processes and climate change. In this study, a newly developed daily satellite-based precipitation product, termed Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks – Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR), is used as input for a hydrologic model to simulate streamflow in the upper Yellow and Yangtze River basins on the Tibetan Plateau. The results show that the simulated streamflows using PERSIANN-CDR precipitation and the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) precipitation are closer to observation than that using limited gauge-based precipitation interpolation in the upper Yangtze River basin. The simulated streamflow using gauge-based precipitation are higher than the streamflow observation during the wet season. In the upper Yellow River basin, gauge-based precipitation, GLDAS precipitation, and PERSIANN-CDR precipitation have similar good performance in simulating streamflow. The evaluation of streamflow simulation capability in this study partly indicates that the PERSIANN-CDR rainfall product has good potential to be a reliable dataset and an alternative information source of a limited gauge network for conducting long-term hydrological and climate studies on the Tibetan Plateau.


2019 ◽  
Vol 219 ◽  
pp. 24-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhao ◽  
Xiangde Xu ◽  
Liping Liu ◽  
Rong Zhang ◽  
Hongxiong Xu ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 885-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenghai Wang ◽  
Kai Yang ◽  
Yiling Li ◽  
Di Wu ◽  
Yue Bo

Abstract Tibetan Plateau (TP) snow cover undergoes significant temporal and spatial variations during the winter and spring months. This study investigates the relationship between the spatiotemporal distribution of winter–spring snow cover (SC) over the TP and summer precipitation in eastern China (EC) using the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. Four simulation experiments are designed to validate the results of SVD analysis. Both observations and simulations show that heavier snow cover in the southern TP leads to more rainfall in the Yangtze River basin and northeastern China, and less precipitation in southern China, whereas heavier snow cover in the northern TP results in enhanced rainfall in southeastern and northern China and weakened precipitation in the Yangtze River basin. The linkage is attributed to anomalous westerly winds in the upper troposphere at around 200 hPa and to changes of the southern branch of westerlies at 500 hPa on the south side of the TP, which are caused by lasting diabatic heat anomalies over the TP. The shifts in position of the westerly jet at the exit region and negative anomalies of geopotential height at 500 hPa further result in anomalous anticyclone over the East China Sea and the corresponding 850-hPa water vapor convergence and influence the anomalous summer precipitation belt in EC.


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