Figure 1. Impacts of land–sea thermal contrast on the Asian summer monsoon, showing the summer precipitation rate (color shading, unit mm·d^–1) and 850 hPa winds (vectors) for a, the control experiment CON; b, observations averaged over the period 1979–2009 from Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) for precipitation and from NCEP-DEO AMIP-II Reanalysis (R-2) for winds; c, experiment NMT in which the global surface elevations are set to zero; and d, experiment L_S in which only the elevations of the Iranian Plateau (IP) and the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are set to zero.

Thick contours indicate elevations higher than 1,500 m and 3,000 m.