On the topic of "Monsoon Melee", Science: News Focus has reported on the arguement about influences of the Tibetan Plateau on the Monsoon between Chinese and American scientists on 21 June 2013.
In 2010, Prof. William Boos from Yale University and Prof. Zhiming Kuang from Harvard University have published a paper in the Nature, they've pointed out that Tibet is irrelevant to the Indian monsoon. Instead, they say the monsoon is caused by a "barrier effect": the Himalayas blocking cold, dry winds from the north. (Jane Qiu, 2013) Two years’later, Prof. Guoxiong Wu, an atmospheric scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics, and his colleagues have made a debate on Boos and Kuangs' views, which proves that the southern branch of the monsoon, which covers southern India, is mainly driven by land-sea thermal differences, while heating of the Himalayas is necessary for drawing moisture further inland. (Jane Qiu, 2013) It has been released in the Scientific Repots in 2012. Science: News Focus has reported the "Monsoon Melee" in recent time, which also reveals Prof. Peter Webster (climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta ) and Prof. Brain Hoskins' (climate scientist at Imperial College London) objections to the results summarized by Boos and Kuang.
The argument highlights comprehensively understanding of the modeling climate in mountain regions and benefits the improvement of weather prediction, however, the role of the Tibetan Plateau in global climate remains to be explored. More information is available on the following references:
Jane Qiu, Monsoon Melee, Science, 21 June 2013: Vol. 340 no. 6139 pp. 1400-1401.DOI:10.1126/science.340.6139.1400.
Guoxiong Wu, Yimin Liu, Bian He, Qing Bao, Anmin Duan &Fei-Fei Jin, 2012: Thermal Controls on theAsian Summer Monsoon. Nature_Sci. Rep. 2, 404; DOI:10.1038/srep00404.
Boos, W. R. & Kuang, Z. M. 2010: Dominant control of the South Asian monsoon by orographic insulation versus plateau heating. Nature 463, 218-223.
