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Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the Iranian Plateau (IP), and the Mongolian Plateau (MP) belong to High Asia, their synergy thermal forcing plays a crucial role in Asian monsoon systems and downstream climate. Therefore, to better understand the turbulent heat exchange between land and air and its climatic effects over the three Plateaus, the applicability of the sensible heat flux (SH), the dominant component of the surface heat source and one of the essential factors affecting the Asian monsoon, should be evaluated. In this study, six widely used reanalysis datasets (ERA5, ERA5-Land, CFSR, JRA55, MERRA2, GLDAS) are selected and the monthly reanalyzed SH is assessed against the in-situ observations. The statistical results show that ERA5-Land and JRA55 perform better with low bias and root mean square error as well as a relatively high correlation coefficient, while CFSR has good consistency with the observations under the alpine meadow. In addition, spatial patterns of annual SH among the six datasets are compared. Except for JRA55 and CFSR, other datasets reveal that SH is higher over the northern and western TP than the eastern, a higher SH occurs over the southern MP, and a homogeneous pattern presents over the IP. In general, ERA5-Land has reliable performance, which is suggested to be used in the analysis and simulation of the connection between SH over High Asia and Asian monsoon variability.