Historical droughts manifest an abrupt shift to a wetter Tibetan Plateau

Liu, Yongwei; Liu, Yuanbo; Wang, Wen; Zhou, Han; Tian, Lide

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3825-2022

Articles | Volume 26, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3825-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3825-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 26, issue 14

Research article

|

22 Jul 2022

Research article |

| 22 Jul 2022

Historical droughts manifest an abrupt shift to a wetter Tibetan Plateau

Yongwei Liu, Yuanbo Liu, Wen Wang, Han Zhou, and Lide Tian

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3825-2022-supplement

Data sets

GLDAS Noah Land Surface Model L4 monthly 0.25 x 0.25 degree V2.0 H. Beaudoing, M. Rodell, and NASA/GSFC/HSL https://doi.org/10.5067/9SQ1B3ZXP2C5

ERA5-Land monthly averaged data from 1950 to present European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-land-monthly-means

Short summary

This study investigated the wetting and drying of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) from variations in soil moisture (SM) droughts. We found the TP experienced an abrupt and significant wetting shift in the middle to late 1990s, not merely the steady trends given in literature. This shift is dominated by precipitation and attributed to the North Atlantic Oscillation. The wetting shift indicates a climate regime change. Our innovative work provides implications for further knowledge of the TP climate.