ALBERT

Description: Impacts of mountain uplift on the Asian monsoon and adjacent seas are investigated by climate model sensitivity studies. Two sets of general circulation model (GCM) experiments are performed. Using an atmosphere-ocean coupled GCM, a progressive mountain uplift experiment is performed. During boreal summer, monsoon precipitation is confined in the deep tropics around 10{degrees}N in the no-mountain case, but as mountains become higher, heavy rain areas move inland from the East Asian coast with stronger upward winds and increased rainfall over the southeastern Tibetan Plateau region. An increase of freshwater discharge from the Asian rivers results in a significant decrease of sea surface salinities over the Bay of Bengal, the South China, East China and Yellow Seas. A high-resolution atmospheric GCM experiment, which shows improvement in reproducing the present-day model climatology, gives more precise information on precipitation and the circulation changes caused by mountain uplift.