Research team's paper published... “Anomalous temperatures from the Tibetan Plateau can be used to predict precipitation in the western United States.”

(Shanghai = Yonhap News) Correspondent Cha Byeong-seop = At ​​a time when concerns about climate change are heightened due to landslides in the Himalayas near the border of Nepal and China, research has shown that high temperatures in China's Qingjiang (Qinghai-Tibet) Plateau may have led to heavy rain in California in the western United States.

According to the website of the academic journal 'Science Advance' on the 13th (local time), researchers including Professor Xue Yongkang of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Associate Researcher Li Chen of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published a paper containing these contents.

According to the abstract of the paper titled 'Unusually high temperatures in early winter on the Tibetan Plateau led to record winter precipitation in California and adjacent regions,' the researchers focused on the record rainfall in California and other areas in 2016-2017 and 2022-2023.

The researchers said that at this time, California was in a typically dry La Niña situation, and through analysis of observational data and Earth system model experiment results, they analyzed that high temperatures in early winter on the Tibetan Plateau played a major role in precipitation in the western United States immediately thereafter.

The researchers said that high temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau changed the wave train between the Tibetan Plateau and the Rockies.

As a result, the researchers' interpretation is that it affected the 'atmospheric river' (a phenomenon in which water vapor in the atmosphere moves in a thin and long form) in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the west coast of the United States and triggered the collapse of the 'Rossby Wave' (a phenomenon in which atmospheric currents move in a wave-like manner due to the influence of the Earth's rotation).

The researchers said that these phenomena are known to be the main cause of record-breaking precipitation in the western United States, and argued that abnormal temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau could be used to predict precipitation in the western United States.

The researchers also said that not only was the heavy rain not predicted in advance at the time, but it was also not reproduced in subsequent computer simulations, and urged an appropriate response as public concern grew.

According to the Hong Kong media South China Morning Post (SCMP), the damage from heavy rains in California in 2016-2017 and 2022-2023 was about $2 billion (about 2.6 trillion won) and $4.6 billion (about 6.1 trillion won), respectively.

Professor Xue said in an interview with SCMP, "As the paper presents innovative findings, it will take some time for relevant organizations to officially accept it."

He said that the early warning system for precipitation in the western United States could be improved by reflecting temperature data from the Tibetan Plateau, etc., and hoped that this would fill an important hole in existing forecasts that were heavily dependent on sea surface temperature.