Will the tibetan plateau warming depend on elevation in the future?

Abstract

Elevation-dependent warming, greater warming at higher elevations, tends to accelerate the ablation of solid water reserves on the Tibetan Plateau and is thus expected to affect the sustainable water supply of the plateau. In the context of a global climate that is predicted to continue to warm, whether elevation-dependent warming exists on the Tibetan Plateau in the future and, if so, what its characteristics and mechanisms are, are important issues that have not yet been fully assessed. Using six sets of high-resolution outputs from dynamical downscaling simulations based on regional climate models, we investigated the future situation regarding the elevation dependency of climate warming on the Tibetan Plateau. The simulated air temperature trends from the six simulations are validated using meteorological station observations. The trends from only two simulations are selected for analysis due to their statistically significant correlation with the observations. The warming rate first increases to a peak and then slightly declines along with elevation increasing from 2000m to 5600 m. The peak of the warming rate is reached at variable elevations (4400–5200m), which depends on the intensity of the warming. The elevation at which this peak occurs increases when the warming intensifies. Such elevation-dependent warming is mostly caused by the decrease in upward short-wave radiation due to the depletion of snow based on surface energy budget analysis. These results provide some understanding of the future elevation-dependent warming on the Tibetan Plateau, which will be useful for evaluating the sustainability of water resources of the Tibetan Plateau water-affected area.