A study of the characteristics of energy flux and its relationship with the summer monsoon over alpine wetlands in the source region of the Yellow River

The variation trends of sensible heat (SH) and latent heat (LH) flux over the alpine wetlands in the source region of the Yellow River (SRYR) have been altered in the past 30 years. The variations in the surface heat source and its influence on the plateau summer monsoon have become attractive and important. The Community Land Model version 4.5 (CLM4.5), driven by the forcing data from CRUNCEP, was used to simulate the spatio-temporal variation characteristics of the SH and LH from 1980 to 2010 over the SRYR. The simulated SH and LH are compared to the situ measurements of the Maduo climatic monitoring station from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources. In addition, the relationships between the SH, LH and plateau summer monsoon have also been analysed. The results show that the seasonal mean SH reaches its maximum in spring and its minimum in winter. For the annual SH, there is an increasing trend in the early period and then a decreasing trend, while the variation trends of the LH are opposite to those of the SH flux. In addition, the LH transfer in summer reaches a maximum; the SH flux in the northern SRYR was higher in spring and summer. The SH of the two lakes, Lake Gyaring and Lake Ngoring, are significantly smaller than those of the surrounding areas. For the spatial distributions of the annual mean flux, the SH flux presented larger values over the central SRYR, while it presented smaller values in the southern areas. The LH shows an increasing trend from the northwest to the southeast of the SRYR. Meanwhile, the LH transport over the two lakes is notably higher than those of the surrounding areas. The time series of SH amplitude shows that it changes every 6–10 a. The SH amplitude is a mostly positive anomaly in the spatial distribution of the first pattern. EOF2 shows a high west of 101°E and a low centre east of 101°E; the relationship between the SH in spring and the different plateau summer monsoon indices are negatively correlated over SRYR. The negative correlations between the SH flux and ZPMI, DPMI, and QPMI are more remarkable in the northeast of the region.