Regional and tele-connected impacts of the Tibetan Plateau surface darkening

Shuchang Tang, Anouk Vlug, Shilong Piao (), Fei Li, Tao Wang (), Gerhard Krinner, Laurent Z. X. Li, Xuhui Wang, Guangjian Wu, Yue Li, Yuan Zhang, Xu Lian and Tandong Yao
Additional contact information
Shuchang Tang: Peking University
Anouk Vlug: University of Innsbruck
Shilong Piao: Peking University
Fei Li: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tao Wang: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Gerhard Krinner: Université Grenoble Alpes
Laurent Z. X. Li: Sorbonne Université, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique
Xuhui Wang: Peking University
Guangjian Wu: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yue Li: Peking University
Yuan Zhang: Sorbonne Université, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique
Xu Lian: Peking University
Tandong Yao: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Despite knowledge of the presence of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in reorganizing large-scale atmospheric circulation, it remains unclear how surface albedo darkening over TP will impact local glaciers and remote Asian monsoon systems. Here, we use a coupled land-atmosphere global climate model and a glacier model to address these questions. Under a high-emission scenario, TP surface albedo darkening will increase local temperature by 0.24 K by the end of this century. This warming will strengthen the elevated heat pump of TP, increasing South Asian monsoon precipitation while exacerbating the current “South Flood-North Drought” pattern over East Asia. The albedo darkening-induced climate change also leads to an accompanying TP glacier volume loss of 6.9%, which further increases to 25.2% at the equilibrium, with a notable loss in western TP. Our findings emphasize the importance of land-surface change responses in projecting future water resource availability, with important implications for water management policies.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35672-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-35672-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35672-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().