Annual and seasonal precipitation and their extremes over the Tibetan Plateau and its surroundings in 1963–2015

There exists a clear southeast-northwest gradient in precipitation and extreme daily precipitation but an opposite pattern for the consecutive dry days (CDDs). The wet southeast is trending dry while the dry center and northwest are trending wet in 1963-2015.

Correspondingly, there is a drying tendency over the wet basins in the southeast and a wetting tendency over the dry and semi-dry basins in the center and northwest in summer, which will affect the water resources in the corresponding areas. The increase (decrease) in precipitation tends to correspond to the increase (decrease) in maximum daily precipitation but the decrease (increase) in CDDs. Extreme precipitation events with 20-year, 50-year, 100-year, and 200-year recurrence occurred frequently in the past decades especially in the 1980s.