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Recent pronounced warming on the Mongolian Plateau boosted by internal climate variability

Nature Geoscience volume 17, pages 181–188 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Exceptionally strong summertime warming occurred over the Mongolian Plateau between 1986 and 2004, at a rate that was three times the average terrestrial warming in the Northern Hemisphere. The physical processes responsible for this extreme warming remain unclear. Here we show that the synchronous phase shift of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation contributed to this extreme Mongolian Plateau warming, which cannot be fully explained by the increasing anthropogenic CO2 alone. Pacemaker model experiments show that the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation excited an atmospheric wave train, resulting in an upper-level anticyclonic circulation over the Mongolian Plateau. This anticyclonic circulation increased surface warming by enhancing downward solar radiation, and the surface warming was further boosted by positive land–atmosphere feedbacks. Our results highlight the important role of internal climate variability in driving rapid regional climate change over the Mongolian Plateau.

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Fig. 1: Surface air temperature of Mongolian Plateau.
Fig. 2: External forcing is insufficient to explain the observed abrupt and exceptionally strong warming over the MP.
Fig. 3: Effect of internal variability on the abrupt and exceptionally strong warming over the MP.
Fig. 4: Simulated results from the MPI-PI control simulation.
Fig. 5: Simulated results from the IPSL-CM6A-LR pacemaker and AMIP simulations.

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Data availability

The ERA5 data are from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/search?text=ERA5&type=dataset. The NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data are from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html. The BEST data are from http://berkeleyearth.org/data/. The GISTEMP v.4 data are from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/. The CRUTEM5 data are from https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#sciref. The NOAAGlobalTemp v.5 data are from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaaglobaltemp.html. The ERSST v.5 data are from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v5.html. The HadCRUT5 data are from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut5/. MPI-GE is available from https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/projects/community-projects/MMLEA/. CESM2-LE is available from https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/community-projects/lens2. The pacemaker and AMIP experiment data are available at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/. The CMIP6 data are available from the Earth System Grid Federation archive at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/.

Code availability

The data in this study were analysed with NCAR Command Language (NCL; http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/). The codes associated with this study are available on request from the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42230605 and 41721004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yunnan Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disasters and Climate Resources in the Greater Mekong Subregion, Yunnan University, Kunming, China

    Qingyu Cai, Wen Chen & Tianjiao Ma

  2. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, China

    Qingyu Cai, Wen Chen & Tianjiao Ma

  3. Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shangfeng Chen, Jinling Piao & Xiaoqing Lan

  4. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shangfeng Chen & Jinling Piao

  5. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Shang-Ping Xie

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Contributions

W.C. and Q.C. conceived and designed the study; Q.C., S.C. and W.C. performed the analyses; Q.C., W.C. and S.C. wrote the draft paper; S-P.X., J.P. and T.M. helped improve the paper. X.L. helped download and process the model data. All authors discussed the results and contributed to writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Wen Chen or Shangfeng Chen.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Nathaniel Johnson, Nathan Lenssen and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Tom Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Cai, Q., Chen, W., Chen, S. et al. Recent pronounced warming on the Mongolian Plateau boosted by internal climate variability. Nat. Geosci. 17, 181–188 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01377-6

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