The Response of Lake Variations to Climate Change in Tibetan Plateau in Last 40 Years

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the largest lake area in China, with a total area of existing lakes of 36,900 km2, accounting for 49.5% of the total lake area of China The expansion and shrinkage of lakes in the Tibetan Plateau play critical roles in the water cycle and ecological and environment systems of the Plateau. In this paper, bases on the topographic map in 1970s, and the MASS and TM/ETM satellite remote sensing images from 1970s to 2008, the areas of the lakes were extracted, and a multivariate statistical analysis method was used to analyze the relationship between the area of the lakes and the global climate change, including the change of the temperature, the precipitation, and other factors. The results suggest the variations of lakes in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are closely related to the warming and humidified climate change in the recent years such as rise of the air temperature, increase of the precipitation, etc.