General circulation models (GCMs) are indispensable for climate change adaptive study over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which is the potential trigger and amplifier in global climate fluctuations. With the release of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), 24 GCMs from CMIP5 and CMIP6 were comparatively evaluated for precipitation and air temperature simulations based on the China Meteorological Forcing Dataset (CMFD). Rank score results showed that CMIP6 models generally performed better than CMIP5 for precipitation and surface air temperature over the TP. According to multimodel ensembles (MMEs) of the optimal GCMs for each climate variable, the overestimation of precipitation was both present in CMIP5 and CMIP6, but the results of CMIP6 MMEs were relatively lower in the mid‐west and northern edge of the TP. Furthermore, CMIP6 offered a better performance of precipitation in summer and autumn. For temperature, CMIP6 MMEs were able to reduce the relatively large cold bias that appeared in CMIP5 MMEs in northwest areas to about 1°C and had a smaller bias in spring and winter. Moreover, the investigation into the simulation effects of precipitation at different elevation zones demonstrated that the improved ability of CMIP6 MMEs to reduce bias was mainly concentrated in the elevation zones of 2,000–3,000 m and over 5,000 m, where the precipitation bias was more than 200%. Additionally, CMIP6 MMEs of temperature were able to reduce the bias to less than 2°C in each elevation zone, with the minimum bias of −0.22°C distributed in the region with altitudes from 3,000 to 4,000 m, while the biases of CMIP5 MMEs in the region of 4,000–5,000 m and over 5,000 m were smaller than those of CMIP6 MMEs. Findings obtained in this study could provide a scientific reference for related climate change research over the TP. GCMs of CMIP6 perform better than those of CMIP5 for precipitation and temperature over the TP. Multimodel ensembles (MMEs) of CMIP6 effectively reduce the overestimation of precipitation from CMIP5 MMEs by 40 mm at the annual scale. Improved ability of CMIP6 MMEs shows a significant elevation dependency, especially in elevation zones of 2,000–3,000 m and over 5,000 m for precipitation.

Drought is one of the most widespread and threatening natural disasters in the world, which has terrible impacts on agricultural irrigation and production, ecological environment, and socioeconomic development. As a critical ecologically fragile area located in southwest China, the Yarlung Zangbo River (YZR) basin is sensitive and vulnerable to climate change and human activities. Hence, this study focused on the YZR basin and attempted to investigate the spatiotemporal variations of drought and associated multi-scale response to climate change based on the scPDSI (self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index) and CRU (climate research unit) data. Results showed that: (1) The YZR basin has experienced an overall wetting process from 1956 to 2015, while a distinct transition period in the mid 1990s (from wet to dry) was detected by multiple statistical methods. (2) Considering the spatial variation of the scPDSI, areas showing the significantly wetting process with increasing scPDSI values were mostly located in the arid upstream and midstream regions, which accounted for over 48% area of the YZR basin, while areas exhibiting the drying tendency with decreasing scPDSI values were mainly concentrated in the humid southern part of the YZR basin, dominating the transition period from wet to dry, to which more attention should be paid. (3) By using the EEMD (ensemble empirical mode decomposition) method, the scPDSI over the YZR basin showed quasi-3-year and quasi-9-year cycles at the inter-annual scale, while quasi-15-year and quasi-56-year cycles were detected at the inter-decadal scale. The reconstructed inter-annual scale showed a better capability to represent the abrupt change characteristic of drought, which was also more influential to the original time series with a variance contribution of 55.3%, while the inter-decadal scale could be used to portray the long-term drought variation process with a relative lower variance contribution of 29.1%. (4) The multi-scale response of drought to climate change indicated that changes of precipitation (PRE) and diurnal temperature range (DTR) were the major driving factors in the drought variation at different time scales. Compared with potential evapotranspiration (PET), DTR was a much more important climate factor associated with drought variations by altering the energy balance, which is more obvious over the YZR basin distributed with extensive snow cover and glaciers. These findings could provide important implications for ecological environment protection and sustainable socioeconomic development in the YZR basin and other high mountain regions.

Global agricultural trade creates multiple telecoupled flows of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). The flows of physical and virtual nutrients along with trade have discrepant effects on natural resources in different countries. However, existing literature has not quantified or analyzed such effects yet. Here we quantified the physical and virtual N and P flows embedded in the global agricultural trade networks from 1997 to 2016 and elaborated components of the telecoupling framework. The N and P flows both increased continuously and more than 25% of global consumption of nutrients in agricultural products were related to physical nutrient flows, while virtual nutrient flows were equivalent to one-third of the nutrients inputs into global agricultural system. These flows have positive telecoupling effects on saving N and P resources at the global scale. Reducing inefficient trade flows will enhance resource conservation, environmental sustainability in the hyper-globalized world.