Characteristics of Atmospheric Heat Sources in the Tibetan Plateau-Tropical Indian Ocean Region

Investigating the temporal and spatial distributions of the atmospheric heat sources (AHS) over the Tibetan Plateau-Tropical Indian Ocean (TP-TIO) region is of great importance for the understanding of the evolution and development of the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM). This study used the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA55) data from 1979 to 2016 and adopted statistical methods to study the characteristics of the AHS between the TP and TIO, and theirs link to the SASM on an interannual scale. The results indicated that the monthly variations of the AHS in the two regions were basically anti-phase, and that the summer AHS in the TP was obviously stronger than that in the TIO. There were strong AHS and atmospheric moisture sink (AMS) centers in both the eastern and western TP in summer. The AHS center in the east was stronger than that in the west, and the AMS centers showed the opposite pattern. In the TIO, a strong AHS center in the northwest-southeast direction was located near 10°S, 90°E. Trend analysis showed that summer AHS in the TIO was increasing significantly, especially before 1998, whereas there was a weakening trend in the TP. The difference of the summer AHS between the TP and TIO (hereafter IQ) was used to measure the thermal contrast between the TP and the TIO. The IQ showed an obvious decreasing trend. After 1998, there was a weak thermal contrast between the TP and the TIO, which mainly resulted from the enhanced AHS in the TIO. The land-sea thermal contrast, the TIO Hadley circulation in the southern hemisphere and the SASM circulation all weakened, resulting in abnormal circulation and abnormal precipitation in the Bay of Bengal (BOB).