Variations of Summer Precipitation and Its Relation with Vapor Transfer over the Qinghai Plateau

From the study of the summer precipitation variation over the Qinghai Plateau and its dependence on vapor transfer, results are presented as follows: 1) during 1961-2003, both the summer rainfall and meridional net vapor flux (NVF) in the atmosphere display a parabola-shaped change with first rise and then drop in intensity and, in contrast, the zonal and regional NVFs exhibit increasing trends; 2) meridional NVF is positively correlated with the rainfall; 3) di erences in vapor transfer throughout atmospheric vertical extent between dry and wet years over the plateau are shown in that the transfer is stronger in a wet year with large-scale vapor convergence and vice versa in a dry year; in a wet year the meridional vapor transport can reach a belt 3.5 degrees of latitude northward and 7 degrees of longitudes eastward of the positions in a dry year; and vapor flux increases (decreases) by 54.0% (21.9%) in a wet (dry) year with respect to the mean (over 1971-2000).