Dominant Contribution of South Asia Monsoon to External Moisture for Extreme Precipitation Events in Northern Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Numerous previous studies have pointed out that the South Asia monsoon (SAM) contributes most moisture to the southern Tibetan Plateau, whilst the moisture over the Northern Tibetan Plateau (NTP) is supplied by the westerlies, but the moisture sources for extreme precipitation events remain unclear. In this study, the tracking of external moisture sources was performed on ten extreme precipitation events over each of six target subregions of the NTP during the summer of 2010–2018. We found that the SAM provided most of the external moisture for extreme precipitation events in the NTP, except for the largest contribution from East Asia to extreme precipitation in the easternmost subregion. The moisture carried by westerly winds is the second foreign source over the western NTP. In addition, more than 40% of the NTP extreme precipitation events occurred under the synergy of weak westerlies and enhanced SAM, and these events have a longer duration than others. Thus, SAM plays a key role in moisture transport for the extreme precipitation events over the NTP, even though its contribution to the climatological moisture is not significant.