Abstract
The relative roles of the Himalayan orography and South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) circulation in Tibetan Plateau (TP) precipitation remain contentious, yet numerical simulations exhibit substantial uncertainties due to extreme topographic gradients. Conventional satellites capture only exterior cloud properties or precipitation particle quantification, missing cloud-internal heating and updrafts. Using a novel satellite retrieval, we resolve the vertical structure of latent heating (LH) within precipitating clouds along the Himalayan slopes, offering new insight into precipitation drivers in this critical region. Satellite observations show that in spring, the altitude of peak latent heat (APLH) follows the southern slope topography, reflecting strong orographic control. Model results reveal that surface sensible heating below 2 km and orographic uplift above 2 km together enhance vertical motion and precipitation. In summer, however, the APLH stabilizes near 6 km across the southern Plateau, pointing to diminished local forcing and dominant large-scale monsoon control. The SASM supplies warm, moist air via mid-tropospheric moisture transport, bypassing terrain lifting and surface heating. These findings reveal a terrain-monsoon “seesaw” in Himalayan cloud-precipitation processes, characterized by a seasonal shift in dominance from local orographic forcing before the onset of the SASM to large-scale monsoonal circulation after the onset. This perspective provides broader insights into mountain-monsoon water cycle interactions worldwide.
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Data availability
The ERA5 reanalysis data used in this study are publicly available from the Copernicus Climate Data Store (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets). Precipitation rate data derived from the GPM DPR are available from NASA Earthdata (https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/). The VPH dataset is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFF0809401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China NSFC (Grant Nos. 42330602, 42275139, and 41830104), Innovation Center for Fengyun Meteorological Satellite Special Project (Grant no. FY-APP-ZX-2022.0211). The authors acknowledge using DeepSeek-R1 (https://www.deepseek.com) for language polishing to enhance grammatical accuracy. All scientific content and interpretations remain solely the responsibility of the authors.
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R.L. developed the research idea and designed the experiments. Y.Z. carried out the study and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. R.L., C.Z., Y.L., Y.F., Y.W., R.Z., and L.Z. contributed to revising the manuscript and provided critical feedback. H.Z. and X.X. supported the project by providing latent heating data. P.Z., L.C., and Q.W. provided resources essential to the project. All authors discussed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Chun Zhao is an Associate Editor of npj Climate and Atmospheric Science and was not involved in the journal’s review of, or decisions related to, this manuscript.
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Zhou, Y., Li, R., Zhao, H. et al. Satellite latent heating retrievals uncover a seasonal terrain-monsoon seesaw in southern Tibetan Plateau rainfall. npj Clim Atmos Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01364-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01364-1
