Fig. 5: Tagged moisture source regions in IsoGSM3 and their climatological characteristics.

a Schematic representation of moisture source regions considered in this study (see “Methods”). The oceanic sources include Arabian Sea (ARAB); Bay of Bengal (BoB); tropical Indian Ocean (TIO); southern Indian Ocean (SIO); South China Sea (SCS); Pacific Ocean (PAC); South Atlantic (SATL); North Atlantic (NATL). The terrestrial sources include Indo-China Peninsula (ICP); the Indian subcontinent (IND), and continental China (CHN). For analysis, the 11 sources are grouped into three components: Indian Ocean (IO), comprising TIO and SIO; Pacific Ocean (PO), comprising PAC and SCS. All terrestrial sources (CHN, IND, ICP, and all remaining land surfaces) are lumped together to form a single land source (LND). b Climatological summer-half contributions of total precipitable water (TWP) from the three aggregated moisture source regions: LND (shaded), IO (solid blue contours), and PO (dashed contours). The CEC domain is indicated by the rectangle. The dotted contour (white) shows the 2500 m elevation, approximating the boundary of the Tibetan Plateau. c Annual cycles of fractional moisture contributions from the three aggregated source regions (IO, PCO, and LND) and the individual ARAB and BoB regions. Shading around each curve indicates ±1 standard deviation. IO, PCO, BoB, and ARAB are plotted against the left y-axis; LND is plotted against the right y-axis.