The unique characteristics of land–air coupling and troposphere–stratosphere interaction over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), the highest landform in the world, play a vital role in weather and climate on regional and global scales. Although a great deal of research has been carried out, large gaps remain in our understanding of TP land–air coupling and its climate effects, due to a lack of observations and the issue of model biases. To address these obstacles, a 10-year national research program entitled “Changes in the Land–Air Coupled System over the Tibetan Plateau and its Impacts on Global Climate (LASTPIC)” was launched by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in January 2014. What LASTPIC does revolves around three aspects: TP land–air coupled processes; TP’s influence on global climate; reanalysis and model. This paper mainly focuses on the data collection, scientific understanding, and model development of LASTPIC in terms of TP land–atmosphere–ocean coupling and its global climate impacts since program’s inception.
The increase in intense tropical cyclone (TC) activity over the western North Pacific (WNP) has often been linked to a warming ocean1-8. Here we show, however, that the TC intensity increasing trend in the tropical WNP during the past three decades are mainly related to the warming of the East Asian continent, especially a warming Tibetan Plateau (TP). The regional weak increasing trend of local sea surface temperature unlikely supplies the necessary energy for this increase in TC intensity. Instead, a weakened vertical wind shear (VWS) appears to be the main contributing factor. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the warming TP strengthens the South Asian high-pressure system, which triggers a wave train toward the tropical WNP, subsequently modifying the upper- and lower-tropospheric zonal winds to reduce the VWS. Applying the high correlation between TC intensity and the local VWS to climate model projection results supports that TCs will likely become stronger, with a significantly increasing rate of 1.0 m s-1/10 years during 2021–2050, due to a further warming of the East Asian continent. Thus, the rims of East Asia and Southeast Asia could face an increasing risk of intense typhoons.
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