Tibetan Plateau Forcing and the Timing of the Monsoon Onset over South Asia and the South China Sea

Observations were employed to study the thermal characteristics of the Tibetan Plateau and its neighboring regions, and their impacts on the onset of the Asian monsoon in 1989. Special attention was paid to the diagnosis of the temporal and spatial distributions of surface sensible and latent heat fluxes. Results show that the whole procedure of the outbreak of the Asian monsoon onset is composed of three consequential stages. The first is the monsoon onset over the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal (BOB) in early May. It is followed by the onset of the East Asian monsoon over the South China Sea (SCS) by 20 May, then the onset of the South Asian monsoon over India by 10 June. It was shown that the onset of the BOB monsoon is directly linked to the thermal as well as mechanical forcing of the Tibetan Plateau. It then generates a favorable environment for the SCS monsoon onset. Afterward, as the whole flow pattern in tropical Asia shifts westward, the onset of the South Asian monsoon occurs. Finally, the timing of the onset of the Asian monsoon in 1989 was explored. It was shown that the onset of the Asian monsoon occurs when the warm or rising phase of different low-frequency oscillations reach the “East Asian monsoon area” (EAMA) concurrently. These include the warm phase of the eastward propagating two- to three-week oscillation (TTO) of the upper-layer temperature in middle latitudes, the rising phase of the northward propagating Madden–Julian oscillation of the southern tropical divergence, and the rising phase of the westward propagating TTO of the western Pacific divergence. It was concluded that the timing of the Asian monsoon onset is determined when the favorable phases of different low-frequency oscillations are locked over the EAMA.