Climate change on the northern Tibetan Plateau during 1957-2009: Spatial patterns and possible mechanisms

Gridded daily precipitation, temperature minima and maxima, and wind speed are generated for the northern Tibetan Plateau (NTP) for 1957-2009 using observations from 81 surface stations. Evaluation reveals reasonable quality and suitability of the gridded data for climate and hydrology analysis. The Mann-Kendall trends of various climate elements of the gridded data show that NTP has in general experienced annually increasing temperature and decreasing wind speed but spatially varied precipitation changes. The northwest (northeast) NTP became dryer (wetter), while there were insignificant changes in precipitation in the south. Snowfall has decreased along high mountain ranges during the wet and warm season. Averaged over the entire NTP, snowfall, temperature minima and maxima, and wind speed experienced statistically significant linear trends at rates of 20.52 mm yr_-1 (water equivalent), +0.04°C yr_-1, +0.03°C yr_-1, and 20.01 m s_-1 yr_-1, respectively. Correlation between precipitation/wind speed and climate indices characterizing large-scaleweather systems for four subregions inNTP reveals that changes in precipitation and wind speed in winter can be attributed to changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Arctic Oscillation (AO), the East Asian westerly jet (WJ), and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (wind speed only). In summer, the changes in precipitation and wind are only weakly related to these indices. It is speculated that in addition to the NAO,AO, ENSO,WJ, and the East and SouthAsian summermonsoons, local weather systems also play important roles.