Indian monsoon precipitation isotopes linked with high level cloud cover at local and regional scales

Abstract

Precipitation stable isotopes preserve historic changes of evaporation in the source regions and precipitation processes, therefore, they can be used to reveal regional hydrological cycle dynamics and paleoclimate reconstructions. In monsoon regions, strong inverse impacts of convection on precipitation isotope ratios, have created a debate regarding the interpretation of isotope records as local climate proxies. The proportions of stratiform to convective precipitation on water isotopes, together with the influence mechanisms on seasonal and interannual scales remain highly uncertain. To further address the influence of precipitation patterns on water isotopes, we used 10 yrs of precipitation isotope data from the southern Tibetan Plateau (TP) to explore the effects of large-scale cloud cover and local climate on precipitation isotopes. Correlation analysis performed between local precipitation δ18O values and different level cloud data, indicated significant negative correlations between precipitation isotopes and high level cloud cover on both seasonal and interannual time scales. This result suggests that high-level convection in the upper moisture transport stream is a main control on precipitation isotopes in the southern TP. The clear and coherent variations of precipitation isotopes with the Southern Oscillation Index and outgoing longwave radiation confirmed that strong convection activity in the moisture source region and during transport significantly depleted heavy isotopes in vapor, producing substantially decreased precipitation δ18O in the study region. These results agree with earlier findings of tree ring cellulose isotope records that correlate with cloud cover, but we emphasized the important role of larger-scale regional cloud cover. We also delineated different maximum correlation zones for seasonal and interannual time scales, likely due to different mechanisms. These findings further improve the interpretation of paleoisotope records from the Indian summer monsoon region.