Similarities and differences in driving factors of precipitation changes on the western Loess Plateau and the northeastern Tibetan Plateau at different timescales

Climate change constitutes the superposition of climatic variations at different timescales and is affected by driving factors at multiple scales. Therefore, clarifying the changes in and driving factors of the climate at different timescales is crucial for climate predictions. Here, using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition method, we obtained four components of the western Loess Plateau (WLP) precipitation at the interannual, interdecadal, multidecadal and centennial scales and the long-term change trend, which accounted for 40.4, 33.5, 11.5, 11.6 and 3.0%, respectively, of the total variance in the tree-ring-based precipitation reconstruction during 1566–2013 AD. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) mainly affected the interannual-decadal, multidecadal and centennial changes, respectively, before increasing anthropogenic aerosol emissions began influencing the WLP precipitation. Using the same method, we also obtained four components of the precipitation on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP) at different timescales and found that the interannual-decadal and multidecadal changes in the precipitation on the NETP exhibited good relationships with the changes in the WLP precipitation over the past four centuries and were also mainly affected by ENSO and the PDO, respectively. The correlation between the WLP and NETP precipitation at the centennial scale was mainly positive, and the precipitation relationship between these two regions was affected by solar radiation and the AMV to some extent. However, due to the effects of global warming on NETP precipitation and the effects of increasing anthropogenic aerosols on WLP precipitation, this correlation has become negative in recent decades, indicating that without the influences of human activities, the precipitation on the WLP would be positively related to the NETP precipitation.