scholarly journals Quantitative Analysis of Water Vapor Transport during Mei-Yu Front Rainstorm Period over the Tibetan Plateau and Yangtze-Huai River Basin

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Yang ◽  
Guan-yu Xu ◽  
Xiaofang Wang ◽  
Chunguang Cui ◽  
Jingyu Wang ◽  
...  

There are continuous precipitation systems moving eastward from the Tibetan Plateau to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze-Huai River during the Mei-yu period. We selected 20 typical Mei-yu front precipitation cases from 2010 to 2015 based on observational and reanalysis data and studied the characteristics of their environmental fields. We quantitatively analyzed the transport and sources of water vapor in the rainstorms using the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT_4.9) model. All 20 Mei-yu front precipitation cases occurred in a wide region from the Tibetan Plateau to the Yangtze-Huai River. The South Asian high and upper level jet stream both had strong intensities during the Mei-yu front rainstorm periods. Heavy rainfall mainly occurred in the divergence zone to the right of the high-level jet and in the convergence zone of the low-level jet, where strong vertical upward flows provided the dynamic conditions required for heavy rainfall. The water vapor mainly originated from the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and South China Sea. 52% of the air masses over the western Tibetan Plateau originated from Central Asia, which were rich in water vapor. The water vapor contribution at the initial position was only 41.5% due to the dry, cold air mass over Eurasia, but increased to 47.6% at the final position. Over the eastern Tibetan Plateau to the Sichuan Basin region, 40% of the air parcels came from the Indian Ocean, which was the main channel for water vapor transport. For the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, 37% of the air parcels originated from the warm and humid Indian Ocean. The water vapor contribution at the initial position was 38.6%, but increased to 40.2% after long-distance transportation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Qingzhe Zhu ◽  
Yuzhi Liu ◽  
Tianbin Shao ◽  
Run Luo ◽  
Ziyuan Tan

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau (TP), the “Water Tower of Asia”, plays an important role in the water cycle. However, few studies have linked the TP’s water vapor supply with the climate over North China. In this study, we found that changes in the subtropical westerly jet (SWJ) dynamically induce drought in North China, and the TP plays an important role in this relationship. During July-August for the period of 1981-2019, the SWJ center between 75°E and 105°E obviously shifted northward at a rate of 0.04° per year. Correspondingly, the zonal winds in the southern subtropics were incredibly weakened, causing the outflow of water vapor from the TP to decrease dramatically. Combined with numerical simulations, we discovered that a reduction in water vapor transport from the TP can obviously decrease the precipitation over North China. Sensitivity experiments demonstrated that if the water vapor outflow from the eastern border of the TP decreases by 52.74%, the precipitation in North China will decrease by 12.69% due to a decrease in the local cloud fraction caused by a diminished water vapor content in the atmosphere. Therefore, although less water vapor transport occurs in the upper troposphere than in the lower troposphere, the impact of transport from the TP in the former on the downstream precipitation cannot be ignored.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangde Xu ◽  
Chan Sun ◽  
Deliang Chen ◽  
Tianliang Zhao ◽  
Jianjun Xu ◽  
...  

Abstract. By using the multi-source data of meteorology over recent decades, this study discovered a summertime “hollow wet pool” in the troposphere with a center of high water vapor over Asian water tower (AWT) on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), where is featured by a vertical transport “window” in the troposphere. The water vapor transport in the upper troposphere extends from the vertical transport window over the TP with the significant connections among the Arctic, Antarctic and TP regions, highlighting an effect of TP’s vertical transport window of tropospheric vapor in the “hollow wet pool” on global change. The vertical transport window was built by the AWT’s thermal forcing in associated with the dynamic effect of the TP’s “hollow heat island”. Our study improve the understanding on the vapor transport over the TP with an important implication to global change.



2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1369-1376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Xie ◽  
F. Wei ◽  
G. Chen ◽  
T. Zhang ◽  
L. Hu

Abstract. Four successive storms with freezing rain and snow blanketed South China from 10 January–2 February 2008, when the precipitation increased more than 200%–300% above the average for the corresponding period. The unusual atmospheric circulation associated with these disasters was caused by many complex physical processes, one of which was the active southern branch of currents over low latitude ocean areas which provided plenty of water vapor for South China. The ground-based GPS Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) measurements on the Tibetan Plateau, supported by the China and Japan Intergovernmental Cooperation Program (JICA), has compensated for the lack of conventional observations of atmospheric water vapor in this area and provided a good opportunity to analyze the character of the water vapor transport in the four heavy precipitation processes. It was found that the GPS stations located on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau were on the route of the water vapor transport during 25 January–29 January and 31 January–2 February when two heavy precipitation events occurred over South China. The increasing trend from the one to two days pre-observation by the GPS stations was then associated with the heavy precipitation. Precipitation during 10 January–16 January and 18 January–22 January was significantly related to the abnormal variation of the one day pre-observation by the GPS stations located on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. This research indicates that ground-based GPS measurements are applicable to data assimilation in operational numerical models.



2020 ◽  
Vol 140 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kepiao Xu ◽  
Lei Zhong ◽  
Yaoming Ma ◽  
Mijun Zou ◽  
Ziyu Huang


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