EGU23-2550
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-2550
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Regional and tele-connected impacts of the Tibetan Plateau surface darkening

Shuchang Tang1, Anouk Vlug2,3, Shilong Piao1,4, Fei Li4, Tao Wang4, Gerhard Krinner5, Laurent Z. X. Li6, Xuhui Wang1, Guangjian Wu4, Yue Li1, Yuan Zhang6,7,8, Xu Lian1,9, and Tandong Yao4
Shuchang Tang et al.
  • 1Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
  • 2Department of Atmospheric and Cryospheric Sciences, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
  • 3Institute of Geography, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
  • 4State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources (TPESER), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
  • 5Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France.
  • 6Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique, Paris, France.
  • 7Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif sur Yvette, France.
  • 8Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Paris, France.
  • 9Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, USA.

Despite knowledge of the presence of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in reorganizing large-scale atmospheric circulation, it remains unclear how surface albedo darkening over TP will impact local glaciers and remote Asian monsoon systems. Here, we use a coupled land-atmosphere global climate model and a glacier model to address these questions. Under a high-emission scenario, TP surface albedo darkening will increase local temperature by 0.24 K by the end of this century. This warming will strengthen the elevated heat pump of TP, increasing South Asian monsoon precipitation while exacerbating the current “South Flood-North Drought” pattern over East Asia. The albedo darkening-induced climate change also leads to an accompanying TP glacier volume loss of 6.9%, which further increases to 25.2% at the equilibrium, with a notable loss in western TP. Our findings emphasize the importance of land-surface change responses in projecting future water resource availability, with important implications for water management policies.

How to cite: Tang, S., Vlug, A., Piao, S., Li, F., Wang, T., Krinner, G., Li, L. Z. X., Wang, X., Wu, G., Li, Y., Zhang, Y., Lian, X., and Yao, T.: Regional and tele-connected impacts of the Tibetan Plateau surface darkening, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-2550, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-2550, 2023.