Temperature anomalies in central and eastern Tibetan Plateau in relation to general circulation patterns during 1951-1993

Temperature anomalies at 44 stations with fairly complete records for the p eriod 1961-1987 were selected from a 74-station database and were analysed by principal component analysis (PCA), producing three major subregions in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. The first subregion is located in the south-central portion of the Tibetan Plateau. The second subregion repr esents the northeastern portion of the Plateau, mostly in the Qinghai Provi nce, while the third subregion represents the western Sichuan Province. Tem perature data during 1951-1993 for 48 stations within these subregions were used to construct temperature anomaly records. In correlation field analys es between subregional temperature anomalies and 500 hPa geopotential heigh t anomalies, it was found that the temperatures in each region were associa ted with the pressure height anomaly patterns in different ways. In additio n, different patterns were identified during cold (October-March) and warm (April-September) seasons. Major extratropical teleconnections in the realm of Eurasia and western Pacific and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (]ENSO) ev ents were significantly correlated with the subregional temperature anomali es. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that the macroscale circ ulation patterns explained up to 26% of the total variation in subregional temperature anomalies during the cold season and 16% of the variation durin g the warm season. Copyright (C) 2000 Royal Meteorological Society.