Vegetation and Ocean Feedbacks on the Asian Climate Response to the Uplift of the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

The growth of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is one of the important forcings acting on the evolution of the Asian climate during the Cenozoic. However, whether vegetation and ocean feedbacks play a specific role in the Asian climate response to TP uplift remains unclear. Here we investigate this issue through a set of numerical experiments with the Community Earth System Model. The results indicate that vegetation and ocean feedbacks have important but different effects on the Asian climate change in association with TP uplift, which are intrinsically related to the adjustment of thermal structure. The vegetation feedback leads to excess annual precipitation in East China and South Asia and a weakening of the Asian winter monsoon winds and winter middle‐ and high‐level tropospheric westerly winds from South Asia to the northwestern Pacific. By comparison, the ocean feedback induces a deficit of annual precipitation particularly in most areas of the Bay of Bengal, Malay Peninsula, and the South China Sea, a weakening of the Asian summer and winter monsoon winds, and a strengthening of the winter middle‐ and high‐level tropospheric westerly winds from South Asia to the northwestern Pacific. These results highlight the importance of vegetation and ocean feedbacks and further facilitate a better understanding of the paleoclimatic response to the uplift of the TP.

Orographic evolution of northern Tibet shaped vegetation and plant diversity in eastern Asia

“…However, classic climate sensitivity simulations treat Tibet as a single geological unit with no spatial complexity changing its height against a background of present-or paleogeography (14)(15)(16)(17). Some studies have simulated complex regional uplift histories (10,18), but very few modeling studies have directly examined the impact of Tibetan development on vegetation (19,20) and none on biodiversity. Therefore, the links between the evolution of Tibetan topography and vegetation/biodiversity changes across eastern Asia are still poorly understood.…”

Tibetan Plateau Made Central Asian Drylands Move Northward, Concentrate in Narrow Latitudinal Bands, and Increase in Intensity During the Cenozoic

“…Our sensitivity experiments are designed to test mainly the first‐order effect of the different factors on central Asian drylands. For example, we do not test our results by considering vegetation and ocean feedbacks (Zhang et al., 2019), the potential vegetation feedbacks may notably affect the regional hydroclimate. Moreover, we focus on the changes in large‐scale aridity rather than those in local regions not resolved by the model resolution.…”

South Asian summer monsoon enhanced by the uplift of Iranian Plateau in Middle Miocene

“…8), more details are seen in SM2. To focus our analyses on atmospheric dynamics, we neglect the contribution of evaporation, which is relatively small in our simulation despite the possibly important role for precipitation in the northwest India (Zhang et al, 2019). In response to IP uplift, the increased precipitation (2.0 mm day -1 ) is largely attributed to the horizonal moisture advection (2.1 mm day -1 ), in particular the moisture advection by anomalous meridional winds, while the vertical advection plays a secondary role (1.1 mm day -1 ).…”