Zoura, D, Haywood, AM orcid.org/0000-0001-7008-0534, Hill, DJ orcid.org/0000-0001-5492-3925 et al. (2 more authors) (2020) The role of Central Asian uplift in East Asian Monsoon circulation and its palaeoclimate implication. Global and Planetary Change, 184. 103073. ISSN 0921-8181
Abstract
It has been clearly established that the climate of Asia is significantly affected by high-elevation orogens such as the Tibetan Plateau, Mongolian Plateau and Tian-Shan. The East Asian Monsoon (EAM), one of the most prominent features of Asian climate, has been well studied in a modern context and its dynamics are generally well understood. However, specific features of the EAM are less studied and understood in a palaeoclimate context, largely because of associated uncertainties in palaeotopography for the Cenozoic era. Here, we investigate changes in the individual stages of the EAM in response to increasing topography over Central Asia. We perform a series of sensitivity experiments with different palaeogeographic elevations using a coupled ocean-atmosphere General Circulation Model (HadCM3), to investigate seasonal variability of the EAM, and investigate the emergent critical threshold in elevation where the patterns of atmospheric circulation and climate over Asia attains the characteristics observed in the modern climate system. Our results indicate that above an elevation threshold of 3000 m, EAM circulation follows the modern pattern, but below that threshold, EAM circulation and precipitation follow a distinctly different pattern, where the westerly jet does not propagate into the higher latitudes and monsoonal precipitation is limited to June and July. This shift in circulation pattern has important implications for the successful interpretation of proxy-based palaeoclimate and environmental reconstructions. In addition, our results emphasize the importance of the latitudinal position of high-elevation on the EAM circulation, by showing that low-elevation can produce modern-like EAM conditions, if located at different latitudes than modern.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019, Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author produced version of an article published in Global and Planetary Change. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | East Asian Monsoon; Uplift; Climate; Monsoonal precipitation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 16 Jan 2020 11:51 |
Last Modified: | 06 Nov 2020 01:39 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2019.103073 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:155693 |