The coupling effect between plateau eddies and atmospheric circulation has important impacts on climate change and weather systems, especially in the Tibetan Plateau region. Due to the uniqueness of the region’s topography, the interactions with the atmospheric circulation during the generation, development and extinction of eddies are complicated. In this paper, the spatial and temporal characteristics of the coupling effect of plateau eddies with atmospheric circulation are investigated by using three sets of high-resolution reanalysis data (MERRA-2, ERAInterim, and JRA55), as well as satellite observations, combined with the objective identification method of plateau eddies, atmospheric heat source calculation, and the LMS adaptive filtering algorithm. The results show that there is a significant difference in the number of generated plateau vortices between 1985 and 2018, with 22 in 1985 and 7 in 2018. The surface sensible heat fluxes were significantly different between the more and less generating years, 77.4 W/m² in 1985 and 74.3 W/m² in 2018. In addition, the interannual variations of plateau vortex generation and its seasonal characteristics in the three data sets also showed significant periodicity and geographical differences. It was further found that the surface heat source, sensible heat and latent heat are significantly linked to the generation of plateau vortex and atmospheric circulation, especially during the warm season when the interaction between the surface heat source and atmospheric circulation is more closely related.
