At noon on March 16, the Department of Earth System Science (DESS) held a luncheon salon academic sharing activity at S818, Mong Man Wai Technology Building, Tsinghua University. Professor Yang Kun of the DESS was invited as the main speaker of this academic exchange activity, themed “Development and Application of Tibetan Plateau Earth System Model (TPESM)”.

Yang Kun delivers a report

Professor Yang Kun, with a focus on the climate system of the Tibetan Plateau, introduced three aspects, namely mechanism understanding, data production and model application, and reviewed the course of development the TPESM and his team’s progress in research. The team has introduced the turbulent drag scheme of complex terrain into the model to reflect the role of complex terrain on the Tibetan Plateau. The exposed bedrock in the middle and upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River is identified by satellite data, and the distorted expression of the model in this region is corrected. All such work has improved the humidity deviation of the model widely existing on the Tibetan Plateau. The improved model is also applied to reflect the spatial variation of precipitation on the Tibetan Plateau. The research group has used the machine learning method to down-scale analyze the precipitation data of ERA5, and further integrated the observation data of more than 9,000 precipitation stations, resulting in a more accurate and relatively reliable precipitation data product for the Third Pole (TP) Region. The team has made a series of progress in understanding the mechanism and data development of the Tibetan Plateau weather system, which also encourages team members to further explore the utilization of new energy by using the TPESM.

Luncheon scene

After the sharing, faculty members at the meeting discussed problems such as the reasons for the changes of the warming and humidifying trend on the Tibetan Plateau, its impact on the marine environment, on the climate and cities, and on the degradation of alpine grassland, the coupling range of the TPESM and the observation of dust aerosols on the Tibetan Plateau.

Written by Ma Xiaogang and Fu Meijuan