Impact of the Sunda Shelf on the Climate of the Maritime Continent

Drastic paleogeography changes in the Indonesian archipelago over the Plio‐Pleistocene, either in response to sea level oscillations or vertical land motion, enabled the periodic emergence of the Sunda shelf. When emerged, this wide continental platform in the heart of the Maritime Continent may have modified regional and global climate systems. We investigate the effect of the exposure of the Sunda shelf on climate dynamics using a set of numerical simulations with (i) atmosphere‐land surface and (ii) fully coupled general circulation models. We first explore the impact of convection schemes on the rainfall regime simulated over the Maritime Continent and show how they could explain the discrepancies among previous studies. We further depict a robust and common mechanism that prevails. We show that diurnal heating of the surface of the continental platform enhances low‐level convergence and local convection, and fosters local precipitations. This effect, to a second order, is modulated by the radiative effect and increased turbulent heat flux driven by vegetated surface properties such as albedo or roughness. Increasing precipitations over the exposed platform also impacts freshwater export into seawater, making salinity of the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Throughflow highly dependent on the routing scheme over the exposed shelf.