Tibetan Plateau and Summer Monsoon

驱动和塑造大气环流模式的大部分热能来自太阳，通过大气层的下表面。表面的热对比是由大尺度的大陆-海洋和极地-赤道差异产生的。夏季的青藏高原可以起到“高架热板”的作用，加强了巨大的欧亚大陆及其周围海洋提供的热对比。可以想象，这种加强解释了南亚地区环流的季节性逆转比其他地区更明显的原因。班农建议使用一套发展中的理论工具来探索这种可能性。他提议的平行研究将使用这些工具的变化来分析下垫面在加强或消除其上方(流动或静止)气团中已经存在的强烈温度对比中所起的作用。对这一过程的成功分析将有助于减少一组特别令人烦恼的天气预报错误的频率，在这些错误中，锋面通道在预报时出现，但与之相关的降水模式、风况和温度变化要么比预报弱得多，要么比预报强得多。班农之前的工作既构建了并应用了用于这类问题的工具。

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.