Continental Water Vapor Dominantly Impacts Precipitation during the Snow Season on the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau

Atmospheric water vapor plays a key role in the water cycle, especially on the Tibetan Plateau, where precipitation is an invaluable contributor to water resources. To better understand which water vapor source areas influence precipitation on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP), we applied the flexible particle dispersion method (FLEXPART) to simulate water vapor trajectories and water vapor source contribution related to precipitation events during the snow season from 1979 to 2017 on the NETP. The results show that continental water vapor source areas contributed 92.33% of the water vapor to precipitation events on the NETP, which was obviously greater than the water vapor contribution from oceanic areas. One key continental water vapor source area, the Tibetan Plateau without the study area, contributed 66.13% of the water vapor to the precipitation, and central Asia supplied 8.69%, ranking second. Comparing the distributions of the water vapor contributions to extensive and regional precipitation events revealed that the only difference between extensive and regional precipitation events is in the magnitudes of the water vapor contributions, and the spatial distributions of the water vapor contributions are extremely similar. Central and southern China obviously supplied more water vapor to extensive precipitation events than to regional precipitation events. These results help us better understand the recent drastic precipitation changes on the NETP. Significance Statement We sought to understand how water vapor influences precipitation over the northeastern Tibetan Plateau and which water vapor source areas play a key role in the water vapor supply. Therefore, we applied a numerical model to investigate the relationship between water vapor and precipitation from 1979 to 2017 during the snow season. Continental water vapor source areas contributed considerably more water vapor than oceanic water vapor source areas. The most important continental water vapor contributor was the Tibetan Plateau without the northeastern Tibetan Plateau area, and the second highest contributor was central Asia. Future work should focus on how water vapor impacts the precipitation changes in this wetter and warming area.