Abstract
The Himalaya–Tibetan Highland (HTH) is highly vulnerable to climate change for multiple reasons. In this work, we present past and future changes in HTH climate, using temperature and precipitation from APHRODITE, CMIP5 and NEX-GDDP. To assess observed climate change, we analysed APHRODITE and found significant warming (up to 3 °C) during all seasons but no significant change in precipitation. We validated CMIP5 and NEX-GDDP against APHRODITE and found the latter more accurate. Future climate projections under RCP8.5 using NEX-GDDP suggest widespread warming (~5–8 °C) and increase in monsoon and post-monsoon precipitation (up to ~50%) over HTH by the end of the twenty-first century.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP5. We also thank different modelling and observation centres for providing the NEX-GDDP, CMIP5 and APHRODITE data. The work is partly supported by the DST Centre of Excellence in Climate Modeling. PS is thankful to MHRD, India and IIT Delhi for providing his PhD fellowship. We are also thankful to the three anonymous reviewers and editors for their comments and suggestions on this paper.
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Mishra, S.K., Jain, S., Salunke, P. et al. Past and future climate change over the Himalaya–Tibetan Highland: inferences from APHRODITE and NEX-GDDP data. Climatic Change 156, 315–322 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02473-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02473-y