Assessment of warm season precipitation in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau by CMIP6 models

doi:10.12006/j.issn.1673-1719.2021.059

Abstract

Abstract:

The steep terrain area in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau is a large deviation area for climate models in the processes of simulating land precipitation, and this deviation has not been effectively improved for a long time. Based on the daily precipitation of 17 global climate models participating in the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the ability of the latest climate models to simulate precipitation climatological characteristics and their intraseasonal evolution over the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau during the warm season (May to September) from 2000 to 2014 was assessed. The results show that the positive precipitation deviation in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau exists in most CMIP6 models, and the false precipitation center mainly comes from the over-simulation of the heavy rainfall (precipitation≥6 mm/d), and the simulation of the weak rainfall (precipitation<6 mm/d) is smaller than that of TRMM observation. Although there is a consistent over-simulation of the warm season precipitation in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau, there are large differences in the simulation of precipitation for different months between models. The analysis based on the circulation field shows that the intraseasonal evolution of the heavy rainfall in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau is closely related to the evolution of southerly wind anomalies in the mid-troposphere in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau and east to it. The above results indicate that although the simulation of the mid-tropospheric circulation is not the main factor causing the positive deviation of the simulation of heavy rainfall in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau, the reasonable simulation of the intraseasonal variation of the circulation is a key factor for a model to reproduce the month-to-month variation of heavy rainfall on the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau.

Key words: CMIP6 models, Eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau, Warm season precipitation, Atmospheric circulation

ZHANG Xin-Ran, CHEN Hao-Ming. Assessment of warm season precipitation in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau by CMIP6 models[J]. Climate Change Research, 2022, 18(2): 129-141.

Figures/Tables 10

Table 1 The information of 17 CMIP6 models

Fig. 1 Spatial distribution of precipitation. (The black contour is the 500 m terrain height line, the red box (101˚-106˚E, 29˚-34˚N) is the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau)

Fig. 2 Same as Fig. 1, but for the spatial distribution of precipitation deviation between CMIP6 models and TRMM observation

Fig. 3 Distribution of precipitation average between 29˚N and 31˚N. (The gray vertical dashed line is the location of the TRMM observation precipitation center)

Fig. 4 Taylor diagram of the spatial distribution of precipitation between each CMIP6 model and TRMM observation. (a) East Asian region (70˚-130˚E, 10˚-50˚N), (b) the region of eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau (100˚-110˚E, 25˚-35˚N)

Fig. 5 Simulation of each CMIP6 model for different intensity precipitation in the eastern slope of the Tibetan plateau. (a) Occurrence as a percentage of total days, (b) annual precipitation

Fig. 6 Monthly evolution of precipitation in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau

Fig. 7 Spatial distribution of horizontal wind at 500 hPa

Fig. 8 Spatial distribution of the correlation coefficients between the precipitation series in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau and other regional 500 hPa southerly wind series in the East Asia region. (The black dashed box is the center of positive correlation)

Fig. 9 Decade-by-decade evolution of precipitation (red line) in the eastern slope of the Tibetan Plateau and the south wind (black line) in the positive correlation center in Fig. 8. (The gray dotted line in the figure represents every ten days, for example, 5 in the figure refers to mid-May, the upper gray dotted line refers to early May, and the latter gray dotted line refers to late May)

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