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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Hayley Fowler
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
© 2026 The Author(s).As the dominant atmospheric circulation pattern over the western Tibetan Plateau (TP), the Western Tibetan Vortex (WTV) exerts substantial control on springtime 2 m surface air temperature (T2m). However, its underlying radiative processes remain unclear. This study integrates GEWEX satellite observations with ERA5 and MERRA-2 reanalysis, applying surface energy balance diagnostics to quantify the WTV's radiative forcing on T2m variability. We find the WTV explains ∼66% of T2m variance (R = 0.81) across the western TP and the adjacent Southwest Asia. Downward shortwave radiation (DSW) emerges as the primarily radiative factor modulated by the WTV via cloud radiative forcing (CRF) processes. Specifically, anticyclonic WTV events reduce cloudiness, generating positive CRF anomalies that enhancing surface DSW and cause warming. Conversely, cyclonic events increase cloudiness, producing negative CRF anomalies that diminish DSW and induce cooling. These findings advance understanding of the radiative processes by which the upper circulations modulate the surface climate over the TP.
Author(s): Wang J, Li X-F, Wang J, Yang S, Fowler HJ
Publication type: Letter
Publication status: Published
Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
Year: 2026
Volume: 53
Issue: 3
Print publication date: 16/02/2026
Online publication date: 06/02/2026
Acceptance date: 28/01/2026
ISSN (print): 0094-8276
ISSN (electronic): 1944-8007
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc
URL: https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL119603
DOI: 10.1029/2025GL119603
Data Access Statement: The monthly ERA5 data sets that support the findings of this study are publicly available via Hersbach et al. (2023a, 2023b) at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets?q=monthly&limit=30 and the MERRA-2 monthly reanalysis data set that support the findings of this study are publicly available via Gelaro et al. (2017) at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?project=MERRA-2. The GEWEX-SRB monthly satellite data data set was obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Sciences Data Center NASA/GEWEX SRB Project (NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC, 2021a, 2021b) at https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/project/SRB?level=4.
