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.
Highlights
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the largest extent of high terrain in the world, known as “the roof of the world”, with an average altitude of over 4000 m
The results indicate that there is a high-value center of water vapor in the mid-troposphere and upper troposphere over the TP, extending southwards to the Bay of Bengal, India and northern Southeast Asia
The intense mesoscale convective activity, which is represented with the low cloud fraction based on the cloud characteristics observed in the TP, and the “massive chimney effect” of huge cumulonimbus cloud drive the transport of atmospheric heat and water vapor to the upper troposphere (Fu et al, 2006; Xie et al, 2018)
Summary
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the largest extent of high terrain in the world, known as “the roof of the world”, with an average altitude of over 4000 m Several rivers, such as the Yangtze, Yellow River, Lancang River and Ganges, originate from the TP, which is regarded as the “Asian water tower” (AWT) (Xu et al, 2008). X. Xu et al.: A vertical transport window of water vapor in the troposphere the monsoon anticyclonic circulations towards northwest India (Chen et al, 2012). Many studies have been focused on the transport of water vapor into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere from the tropical oceans to the high-altitude TP (Chen et al, 2012; Wang et al, 2017; Xie et al, 2018; Randel et al, 2013). The following questions are of great concern in the TP vertical transport of water vapor study with implications for global change, for example: what is the formation mechanism of the vertical transport window of water vapor in the troposphere on the TP? How is the vertical transport of water vapor in the troposphere constructed with the special column of an apparent heat source in the AWT over the TP? What is the global effect of the vertical transport window of water vapor in the troposphere on the TP? From the perspective of global atmospheric energy and water vapor exchanges, this study characterizes a window of water vapor vertical transport within the troposphere over the TP and implications for global change
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