Interannual Variation in Stable Isotopes in Water Vapor Over the Northern Tibetan Plateau Linked to ENSO

Abstract

The ice core δ 18 O records (δ 18 O ice ) from the Tibetan Plateau (TP) have improved our understanding of past climate changes on different time scales (Pang et al., 2020;Thompson, 2000). In the northern TP, the δ 18 O records provide measures of past variability in temperature such as the Chongce ice core which shows a long-term warming trend during the middle to late Holocene followed by a relatively cooler period from ∼2 ka BP until the start of the industrial-era (Pang et al., 2020). δ 18 O profiles from the Dunde ice core in the northern TP indicate that the most recent 50-years period was the warmest of the last 12,000 years (Thompson, 2000). In contrast, δ 18 O ice from the southern TP are often used to reconstruct the interannual intensity of the South Asian Monsoon (Zhang et al., 2005;Zhao et al., 2017). For example, the δ 18 O record from the Zuoqiupu ice core indicates that the South Asian Monsoon significantly weakened during 1901-2012(Zhao et al., 2017 while the annually resolved δ 18 O record from the Dasuopu ice core captures the greatest recorded drought (reduced monsoon intensity) of the past millennium in the southern TP during 1790-1796 A.D. (Thompson et al., 2000). On longer decadal and multidecadal time scales, however, the increasing trends of δ 18 O from the Dasuopu ice core from the southern TP since 1800 have been broadly comparable to the δ 18 O record from the Dunde ice core in the northern TP, suggesting that warming has occurred across the broader TP (Thompson et al., 2000). A composite δ 18 O record from the Noijin Kangsang,