Effect of tropical topography on global climate

The unique height of the extensive Tibetan Plateau seems to be a major forcing feature which, if lowered to elevations of seven million years ago, is associated with a correspondingly weaker Indian summer monsoon. Effects from fluctuations of heating in the regional monsoon regimes in the tropics are communicated globally via atmospheric teleconnections. Alterations of these effects are often associated with air-sea interaction processes (e.g. ENSO), as well as land-surface processes. Future climate change as a result of increased carbon dioxide and trace gases is being studied with coupled ocean-atmosphere GCMs. Preliminary results from one of these models indicate that patterns of tropical land precipitation will be roughly the same, but that the effects of ocean precipitation anomalies associated with ENSO events could cause larger-amplitude monsoon land precipitation anomalies. -from Author