Fig. 3: Schematic diagram of the impact of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) surface darkening on the Asian Summer Monsoon.

The base map of the figure is derived from Supplementary Fig. 1. The black line indicates the boundary of TP. Reduced albedo in the TP (step one) modulates the local energy budget and thus intensifies the role of TP as an “elevated heat pump”, which ascends more air parcels (step two) and further favors the formation of the atmospheric anticyclonic anomaly (South Asian High, SAH) and the downstream West Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) through the Rossby wave trains (step three)^33,34,35. On the one hand, the intensified anticyclonic anomaly in the troposphere causes the strong easterly wind anomaly over South Asia, which weakens the climatological westerly humidity transport from the Arabian Sea to South Asia, but simultaneously propels moist air from the Bay of Bengal and its surrounding regions to the Indian subcontinent (step four) for the precipitation (“precip.” in the figure, step five). On the other hand, the northwestward shift in the WPSH strengthens the southerly winds in East Asia (step four), which transports more water vapor from the ocean into the interior of the continent for precipitation in Northeast Asia, the Yangtze River Valley, and South China (step five). By contrast, the albedo-induced northerly wind anomaly in North China hinders the moist air from the southern regions triggered by the WPSH (step four), thus conducive to the local dryness (step five).