Projections of future precipitation and air temperature over the Tibetan Plateau based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 multimodel ensembles

Abstract

In the context of global warming and the release of projection results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), it is important to conduct research on climate change on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) which exhibits unique geographic characteristics and complex climatic conditions. Using 10 general circulation models (GCMs) from CMIP6 corrected for bias by the daily translation (DT) method, we investigated the projected changes in precipitation and air temperature for the mid‐term (2031–2050) and long‐term (2061–2080) of the 21st century on the TP after evaluating the reliability of the bias correction, for four scenarios based on different combinations of shared socioeconomic pathways and representative concentration pathways. The multimodel ensembles (MMEs) indicated that the projected annual precipitation shows an increasing trend for the mid‐term and long‐term periods, with the projected increase for the long‐term primarily concentrated in areas with less precipitation. Meanwhile, the future precipitation changes exhibit a significant elevation dependency. The rate of increase of precipitation firstly fluctuates and then gradually increases along with the elevation increasing from 1,500 to 5,800 m. The valley value of rate mainly appears in two elevation zones (2,200–2,600 m and 3,400–3,800 m). The projected temporal changes in annual air temperatures reveal obvious warming over the TP. The projected warming is overall more pronounced with increase in elevation; however, it reaches a peak at approximately 5,000–5,200 m and then slows down slightly, indicating that warming is not dependent on elevation in the higher elevation zones. The present results have important implications for investigating the impacts of climate change on the water cycle in alpine regions.

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