Reconstructing the paleoglaciation of the Tibetan Plateau is critical to understanding linkages between regional climate changes and global climate changes, and herewe focus on the glacial history of the Shaluli Shan, an area of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau that receives much of its precipitation from monsoon flow. Based on field investigation, geomorphological mapping, and 10Be exposure da...

Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements in China indicate that crustal shortening accommodates most of India's penetration into Eurasia. Deformation within the Tibetan Plateau and its margins, the Himalaya, the Altyn Tagh, and the Qilian Shan, absorbs more than 90% of the relative motion between the Indian and Eurasian plates. Internal shortening of the Tibetan plateau itself accounts for ...

The seasonal variations of water vapor and cirrus clouds over the Tibetan Plateau are investigated using the recently available Level 3 monthly-mean atmospheric data products with a 1 1 latitude–longitude grid. The data products are derived from the multichannel imaging data acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra Spacecraft. It is shown that the wat...

The Tibetan Plateau is the world’s largest and highest plateau and holds the largest mass of ice on Earth outside the icesheets of Greenland and Antarctica, as well as abundant lakes. This study examined the molecular and isotopic signatures of dissolved organic matter (DOM) along with its biolability in glacier ice, glacier-fed streams, and alpine lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. The aim was to a...

[1] This paper aims to provide a prototype research of how MODIS observations can help to better understand surface and atmosphere conditions over the Tibetan Plateau. Snow melt and summer rainfall over the Tibetan Plateau provide the origin for most of the rivers in South Asia. Therefore, adequately monitoring as many components of the hydrological cycle as possible over the Tibetan Plateau ca...

A 70-yr record of oxygen-18 variability in accumulation from the Tanggula Mountains, central Tibetan Plateau D. R. Joswiak, T. Yao, G. Wu, B. Xu, and W. Zheng Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China Received: 30 June 2009 – Accepted: 6 July 2009 – Published: 16 July 2009 Corre...

Convective variability at submonthly timescales (7–20 days) over the Tibetan Plateau and the associated large-scale atmospheric circulation and convection were examined over regions affected by the Asian Monsoon. The mature phase of the Asian summer monsoon (July–August) was analyzed for those years (1986, 93, 98) in which convective variability on timescales of 14 days was notable over the Tib...

The role played by river networks in regional and global carbon cycle is receiving increasing attention. Despite the potential of radiocarbon measurements (14C) to elucidate sources and cycling of different riverine carbon pools, there remain large regions such as the climate-sensitive Tibetan Plateau for which no data are available. Here we provide new 14C data on dissolved organic carbon (DOC...

Glacial retreat on the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding regions is characteristic since the 1960s and has intensified in the past 10 yr. The magnitude of glacial retreat is relatively small in the interior of the Tibetan Plateau and increases to the margins of the plateau, with the greatest retreat around the edges. Glacial retreat in this region is impacting the hydrological processes in the Ti...

Due to its numerous environmental extremes, the Tibetan Plateau--the world's highest plateau--is one of the most challenging areas of modern human settlement. Archaeological evidence dates the earliest settlement on the plateau to the Late Paleolithic, while previous genetic studies have traced the colonization event(s) to no earlier than the Neolithic. To explore whether the genetic continuity...