Eocene monsoons

A prominent example of climate-tectonic coupling is the Asian monsoon and the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. Here we review some of what is known about the history of the monsoon, within a global context and present results from fully coupled Eocene simulations in which Tibetan Plateau height is varied. Peak elevations were doubled from 2000 m to 4000 m whereas mean elevations increased from 750 to 1500 m. The fully coupled Eocene simulations show that introducing a higher Tibetan Plateau into Asian topography intensifies rainfall over southwest Asia, but induces drying over and behind the Plateau. This atmospheric response is controlled by increases in heating over the Plateau region which drives increases in moisture convergence inducing shifts in lower level atmospheric moisture flux. With Eocene boundary conditions aspects of the canonical response from prior work remain the same: cooling over the uplifted region, a large stationary wave response emanating from the plateau and extending into North America, and a large increase in precipitation in summer in the regions with strongest relief, with a rain shadow behind it. But some important local responses are different from similar studies with modern boundary conditions, such as a warming behind the uplifted mountains, and southward advection of warm, moist air from Paratethys onto the Plateau. These results demonstrate that simulations with fully interactive ocean-atmosphere coupled models with a realistic history of paleogeographic boundary conditions will increase the realism of the resulting climatic simulations and increase the body of available proxy evidence for comparison. More generally we find that a global monsoon distribution of precipitation exists in the Eocene regardless of Tibetan Plateau height. Changing Plateau height has minor global impacts, which include a slight drying of midlatitude and cooling of the North Pacific. The results are robust to changes in climate model resolution and atmospheric pCO(2) changes. In general the impacts of the increase in height of the Plateau are minor and it is unlikely that major patterns in early Cenozoic climate change can be explained by the physical climatic impacts of its uplift. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.