A NUMERICAL STUDY ON FORMATION OF THE NEGATIVE VORTICITY REGION OVER THE NORTHEAST SIDE OF THE QINGHAI-XIZANG PLATEAU^*

In order to investigate the formation of the negative vorticity region over the northeast side of the Qinghai Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau,four sets of numerical experiments have been performed in this paper with a quasigeostrophic barotropical model considering large-scale topography,diabatic heating and dissipation.The diabatic heating in the model contains a constant forcing and timevarying forcing.The time-varying characters are determined by the continuous evolution of the sensible heat flux at Damxung Station (30°29'N,91°06'E) from 31 May to 4 June 1998.Results suggest that there are three types of processes significantly contributing to the formation of the negative vorticity region over the northeast side of the Qinghai Xizang Plateau,and they are the advection of the anticyclonic vortex at the upstream by the basic flow,the energy dispersion of the cyclonic vortex over the south side of the Plateau,and the strengthening of anticyclonic systems produced by the thermal forcing of the Plateau.