Major moisture pathways and their importance to rainy season precipitation over the Sanjiangyuan region of the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Knowledge of the quantitative importance of moisture transport pathways of the Sanjiangyuan region (known as the ‘‘water tower’’ of China) can provide insights into the regional atmospheric branch of the hydrological cycle over the Sanjiangyuan region. A combined method with a clustering algorithm [Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (HDBSCAN)] and a Lagrangian moisture source diagnostic is developed to identify the major moisture transport pathways and quantify their importance to three types of consecutive precipitation events—extreme precipitation (EP) events, moderate precipitation (MP) events, and extreme aridity (EA) events—for the Sanjiangyuan region during the rainy season (June–September 1960–2017). The results indicate that moisture paths from the northwest covering northwest China and central Asia (the N.W. pathway) and moisture paths from southern and southeastern China (the S.S. pathway) are stable moisture transport pathways during EP and MP events [importance (precipitation contribution in percentage): N.W. pathway, 18.4% (EP), 32.2% (MP); S.S. pathway, 25.9% (EP), 28.5% (MP)]. Affected by the western edge of a significant anticyclone anomaly centered around 358N, 1158E, the moisture paths via the Bay of Bengal (the B.B. pathway) can reach the target region and become a supplementary moisture contributor (14.9%) to EP events. Moisture paths via the Arabian Sea and Indian peninsula (the A.I. pathway) are also active but the contributions are limited [4.9% (EP) and 5.6% (MP)]. For EA events, the fast-moving trajectories from farther western Asia (the F.W. pathway) play a dominant role and all major moisture pathways (F.W., N.W., and S.S. pathways) carry limited moisture to the target region.