Climate of the Past Discussions www.clim-past-discuss.net 1814-9340 1814-9359 4 6 2008 10.5194/cpd-4-1265-2008 http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/4/1265/2008/ http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/4/1265/2008/cpd-4-1265-2008.html http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/4/1265/2008/cpd-4-1265-2008.pdf 1265 1287 2008-12-11 Modeling sensitivity study of the possible impact of snow and glaciers developing over Tibetan Plateau on Holocene African-Asian summer monsoon climate L. Jin jinly@lzu.edu.cn Y. Peng F. Chen A. Ganopolski Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany The impacts of various scenarios of snow and glaciers developing over the Tibetan Plateau on climate change in Afro-Asian monsoon region and other regions during the Holocene (9 kyr BP–0 kyr BP) are studied by using the coupled climate model of intermediate complexity, CLIMBER-2. The simulations show that the imposed snow and glaciers over the Tibetan Plateau in the mid-Holocene induce global summer temperature decreases, especially in the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. At the same time, with the imposed snow and glaciers, summer precipitation decreases strongly in North Africa and South Asia as well as northeastern China, while it increases in Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean. For the whole period of Holocene (9 kyr BP–0 kyr BP), the response of vegetation cover to the imposed snow and glaciers cover over the Tibetan Plateau is not synchronous in South Asia and in North Africa, showing an earlier and a more rapid decrease in vegetation cover in North Africa from 9 to 6 kyr BP while it has only minor influence on that in South Asia until 5 kyr BP. Imposed gradually increased snow and glacier cover over the Tibetan Plateau causes temperature increases in South Asia and it decreases in North Africa and Southeast Asia during 6 kyr BP to 0 kyr BP. The precipitation decreases rapidly in North Africa and South Asia while it decreases slowly or unchanged during 6 kyr BP to 0 kyr BP with imposed snow and glacier cover over the Tibetan Plateau. The different scenarios of snow and glacier developing over the Tibetan Plateau would result in differences in variation of temperature, precipitation and vegetation cover in North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The model results show that the response of climate change in African-Asian monsoon region to snow and glacier cover over the Tibetan Plateau is in the way that the snow and glaciers amplify the effect of vegetation feedback and, hence, further amplify orbital forcing. An, Z. S., Porter, S. C., Kutzbach, J. E., Wu, X., Wang, S., Liu, X. D., Li, X. Q., and Zhou, W. 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