Climate change on the northern Tibetan plateau during 1957-2009: Spatial patterns and possible mechanisms

Evaluation reveals reasonable quality and suitability of the gridded data for climate and hydrology analysis. The Mann-Kendall trends of various climate elements of the gridded data show that NTP has in general experienced annually increasing temperature and decreasing wind speed but spatially varied precipitation changes.

The northwest (northeast) NTP became dryer (wetter), while there were insignificant changes in precipitation in the south. Snowfall has decreased along high mountain ranges during the wet and warm season. Averaged over the entire NTP, snowfall, temperature minima and maxima, and wind speed experienced statistically significant linear trends at rates of -0.52 mm yr⁻¹ (water equivalent), +0.04°C yr⁻¹, +0.03°C yr⁻¹, and -0.01 m s⁻¹ yr⁻¹, respectively.