Current climate models commonly overestimate precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which limits our understanding of past and future water balance in the region. Identifying sources of such models' wet bias is therefore crucial. The Himalayas is considered a major pathway of water vapor transport (WVT) towards the TP. Their steep terrain, together with associated small-scale processes, cannot be resolved by coarse-resolution models, which may result in excessive WVT towards the TP. This paper, therefore, investigated the resolution dependency of simulated WVT through the central Himalayas and its further impact on precipitation bias over the TP. According to a summer monsoon season of simulations conducted using the weather research forecasting (WRF) model with resolutions of 30, 10, and 2 km, the study found that finer resolutions (especially 2 km) diminish the positive precipitation bias over the TP. The higher-resolution simulations produce more precipitation over the southern Himalayan slopes and weaker WVT towards the TP, explaining the reduced wet bias. The decreased WVT is reflected mostly in the weakened wind speed, which is due to the fact that the high resolution can improve resolving orographic drag over a complex terrain and other processes associated with heterogeneous surface forcing. A significant difference was particularly found when the model resolution is changed from 30 to 10 km, suggesting that a resolution of approximately 10 km represents a good compromise between a more spatially detailed simulation of WVT and computational cost for a domain covering the whole TP.
[1] Here we present a study of the relationship between July-August (JA) mean climate over China, which is strongly linked to the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM), and the summer (JA) North Atlantic Oscillation (SNAO). The variations of temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover related to the SNAO were analyzed for the period 1951-2002 using gridded data sets as well as instrumental data from 160 stations in China. It was shown that the major patterns of summer climate over China are highly connected with the interannual variation of the SNAO, supporting a teleconnection between the North Atlantic region and East Asia. Based on the analyses of the daily and monthly reanalysis data sets, we propose possible mechanisms of this teleconnection. Changes in the position of the North Atlantic storm tracks and transient eddy activity associated with the positive (negative) SNAO phase contribute downstream to negative (positive) sea level pressure anomalies in northeastern East Asia. In negative SNAO years, a stationary wave pattern is excited from the southern SNAO center over northwestern Europe to northeastern East Asia. However, during positive SNAO years, a stationary wave pattern is excited extending from the SNAO center across the central Eurasian continent at around 40°N and downstream to the southeast. This may explain a connection between the positive SNAO and atmospheric circulation in middle and southeastern China.Citation: Linderholm, H.
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