Tibetan Plateau and Summer Monsoon

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Most of the heat energy that drives and shapes atmospheric circulation patterns comes from the sun via the underlying surface of the atmosphere. Thermal contrasts on the surface are generated, e.g., by continent-ocean and pole-equator differences on the large scale. The Tibetan Plateau in the summer-time can function as an "elevated hot-plate", reinforcing the thermal contrast provided by the massive Eurasian continent and its surrounding oceans. It is conceivable that this reinforcement explains the occurence of the much more pronounced seasonal reversal of circulation over South Asia than over other regions. Bannon proposes to use a set of developing theoretical tools to explore this possibility. His proposed parallel study will use variations of these tools to analyze the role of the underlying surface in the reinforcement or elimination of strong temperature contrasts already present in its overlying (traveling or stationary) air masses. A successful analysis of this process will help reduce the frequency of a particularly vexing set of weather forecasting errors, in which frontal passages occur when they were forecasted, but their associated precipitation patterns, wind conditions, and temperature changes are either much weaker or stronger than forecast. Bannon's previous work has both built and applied the tools to be used in problems of this type.