scholarly journals Evolution of vegetation and climate variability on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 1.74 million years

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (19) ◽  
pp. eaay6193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Zhao ◽  
Polychronis C. Tzedakis ◽  
Quan Li ◽  
Feng Qin ◽  
Qiaoyu Cui ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Glacial Cycles ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Vegetation And Climate ◽  
Millennial Scale

The Tibetan Plateau exerts a major influence on Asian climate, but its long-term environmental history remains largely unknown. We present a detailed record of vegetation and climate changes over the past 1.74 million years in a lake sediment core from the Zoige Basin, eastern Tibetan Plateau. Results show three intervals with different orbital- and millennial-scale features superimposed on a stepwise long-term cooling trend. The interval of 1.74–1.54 million years ago is characterized by an insolation-dominated mode with strong ~20,000-year cyclicity and quasi-absent millennial-scale signal. The interval of 1.54–0.62 million years ago represents a transitional insolation-ice mode marked by ~20,000- and ~40,000-year cycles, with superimposed millennial-scale oscillations. The past 620,000 years are characterized by an ice-driven mode with 100,000-year cyclicity and less frequent millennial-scale variability. A pronounced transition occurred 620,000 years ago, as glacial cycles intensified. These new findings reveal how the interaction of low-latitude insolation and high-latitude ice-volume forcing shaped the evolution of the Tibetan Plateau climate.

Late-Holocene fluctuations of monsoonal Qiangyong Glacier, southern Tibetan Plateau

The Holocene ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 095968362110032
Author(s):  
Xiaolong Zhang ◽  
Baiqing Xu ◽  
Jiule Li ◽  
Ying Xie ◽  
Gerd Gleixner
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Temperature Changes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Physiochemical Parameters ◽  
Continuous Record ◽  
Southern Tibetan Plateau

Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are reliable water sources for Asia. Continuously high-resolution and high-accuracy long-term glacier fluctuations have been examined to improve the reliability of predictions regarding future TP glacier behavior under global climate change. In this study, we analyzed physiochemical parameters in typical glaciolacustrine sediments to reconstruct multidecadal activities of the monsoonal Qiangyong Glacier over the past ~2500 years. The results show that the glacier advanced most strongly during 560 BC–AD 100, followed by AD 1050–1850 and AD 600–850. It retreated most severely during AD 1850–present, followed by AD 100–600 and AD 850–1050. This continuous record corresponds well with changes in the temperature and regional precipitation before the Current Warm Period, exhibiting “warm-humid-retreat” and “cold-dry-advance” patterns. This indicates that temperature changes, rather than precipitation variations, control the monsoonal glaciers at the southern TP at multidecadal to centennial scales. As global warming continues, although the precipitation on the southern TP is projected to increase, the mass loss of TP monsoonal glaciers is expected to continue.

scholarly journals Atmospheric Thermal and Dynamic Vertical Structures of Summer Hourly Precipitation in Jiulong of the Tibetan Plateau

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 505
Author(s):  
Yonglan Tang ◽  
Guirong Xu ◽  
Rong Wan ◽  
Xiaofang Wang ◽  
Junchao Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wind Speed ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Precipitation Amount ◽  
Summer Precipitation ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Hourly Precipitation ◽  
Air Convection ◽  
Precipitation Variation ◽  
Long Term Observation

It is an important to study atmospheric thermal and dynamic vertical structures over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and their impact on precipitation by using long-term observation at representative stations. This study exhibits the observational facts of summer precipitation variation on subdiurnal scale and its atmospheric thermal and dynamic vertical structures over the TP with hourly precipitation and intensive soundings in Jiulong during 2013–2020. It is found that precipitation amount and frequency are low in the daytime and high in the nighttime, and hourly precipitation greater than 1 mm mostly occurs at nighttime. Weak precipitation during the daytime may be caused by air advection, and strong precipitation at nighttime may be closely related with air convection. Both humidity and wind speed profiles show obvious fluctuation when precipitation occurs, and the greater the precipitation intensity, the larger the fluctuation. Moreover, the fluctuation of wind speed is small in the morning, large at noon and largest at night, presenting a similar diurnal cycle to that of convective activity over the TP, which is conductive to nighttime precipitation. Additionally, the inverse layer is accompanied by the inverse humidity layer, and wind speed presents multi-peaks distribution in its vertical structure. Both of these are closely related with the underlying surface and topography of Jiulong. More studies on physical mechanism and numerical simulation are necessary for better understanding the atmospheric phenomenon over the TP.

scholarly journals Atmospheric Water Vapor Budget and its Long-term Trend over the Tibetan Plateau

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongru Yan ◽  
Jianping Huang ◽  
Yongli He ◽  
Yuzhi Liu ◽  
Tianhe Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapor ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Atmospheric Water Vapor ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Atmospheric Water ◽  
Term Trend ◽  
Long Term Trend ◽  
Water Vapor Budget

scholarly journals Diachronous Tibetan Plateau landscape evolution derived from lava field geomorphology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen ◽  
Robert Law
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Landscape Evolution ◽  
Tectonic Geomorphology ◽  
Normal Faults ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Lava Field ◽  
Northern Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Tectonic Processes ◽  
Stepwise Evolution

<p><strong>Evolution of the Tibetan Plateau is important for understanding continental tectonics because of its exceptional elevation (~5 km above sea level) and crustal thickness (~70 km). Patterns of long-term landscape evolution can constrain tectonic processes, but have been hard to quantify, in contrast to established datasets for strain, exhumation and paleo-elevation. This study analyses the relief of the bases and tops of 17 Cenozoic lava fields on the central and northern Tibetan Plateau. Analyzed fields have typical lateral dimensions of 10s of km, and so have an appropriate scale for interpreting tectonic geomorphology. Fourteen of the fields have not been deformed since eruption. One field is cut by normal faults; two others are gently folded with limb dips <6<sup>o</sup></strong><strong>. </strong><strong>Relief of the bases and tops of the fields is comparable to modern, internally-drained, parts of the plateau, and distinctly lower than externally-drained regions. The lavas preserve a record of underlying low relief bedrock landscapes at the time they were erupted, which have undergone little change since. There is an overlap in each area between younger published low-temperature thermochronology ages and the oldest eruption in each area, here interpreted as the transition </strong><strong>between the end of significant (>3 km) exhumation and plateau landscape development. </strong><strong>This diachronous process took place between ~32.5<sup>o</sup> - ~36.5<sup>o</sup> N between ~40 and ~10 Ma, advancing northwards at a long-term rate of ~15 km/Myr. Results are consistent with incremental northwards growth of the plateau, rather than a stepwise evolution or synchronous uplift.</strong></p>

Extremes in the magnitude of annual temperature cycle on the Tibetan Plateau over the past three centuries

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 3599-3608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianping Duan ◽  
Zhuguo Ma ◽  
Naiming Yuan ◽  
Lun Li ◽  
Liang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Temperature Cycle ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The Past ◽  
Annual Temperature Cycle

Melting Ice Rivers

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Colopy
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Mount Everest ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government

From a remote outpost of global warming, a summons crackles over a two-way radio several times a week: . . . Kathmandu, Tsho Rolpa! Babar Mahal, Tsho Rolpa! Kathmandu, Tsho Rolpa! Babar Mahal, Tsho Rolpa! . . . In a little brick building on the lip of a frigid gray lake fifteen thousand feet above sea level, Ram Bahadur Khadka tries to rouse someone at Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology in the Babar Mahal district of Kathmandu far below. When he finally succeeds and a voice crackles back to him, he reads off a series of measurements: lake levels, amounts of precipitation. A father and a farmer, Ram Bahadur is up here at this frigid outpost because the world is getting warmer. He and two colleagues rotate duty; usually two of them live here at any given time, in unkempt bachelor quarters near the roof of the world. Mount Everest is three valleys to the east, only about twenty miles as the crow flies. The Tibetan plateau is just over the mountains to the north. The men stay for four months at a stretch before walking down several days to reach a road and board a bus to go home and visit their families. For the past six years each has received five thousand rupees per month from the government—about $70—for his labors. The cold, murky lake some fifty yards away from the post used to be solid ice. Called Tsho Rolpa, it’s at the bottom of the Trakarding Glacier on the border between Tibet and Nepal. The Trakarding has been receding since at least 1960, leaving the lake at its foot. It’s retreating about 200 feet each year. Tsho Rolpa was once just a pond atop the glacier. Now it’s half a kilometer wide and three and a half kilometers long; upward of a hundred million cubic meters of icy water are trapped behind a heap of rock the glacier deposited as it flowed down and then retreated. The Netherlands helped Nepal carve out a trench through that heap of rock to allow some of the lake’s water to drain into the Rolwaling River.

scholarly journals Mid-Pleistocene transition in glacial cycles explained by declining CO2and regolith removal

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. eaav7337 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Willeit ◽  
A. Ganopolski ◽  
R. Calov ◽  
V. Brovkin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Variability ◽  
Carbon Cycle ◽  
Northern Hemisphere ◽  
Seasonal Variations ◽  
Ice Sheets ◽  
Glacial Cycles ◽  
Solar Insolation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transient Simulations

Variations in Earth’s orbit pace the glacial-interglacial cycles of the Quaternary, but the mechanisms that transform regional and seasonal variations in solar insolation into glacial-interglacial cycles are still elusive. Here, we present transient simulations of coevolution of climate, ice sheets, and carbon cycle over the past 3 million years. We show that a gradual lowering of atmospheric CO2and regolith removal are essential to reproduce the evolution of climate variability over the Quaternary. The long-term CO2decrease leads to the initiation of Northern Hemisphere glaciation and an increase in the amplitude of glacial-interglacial variations, while the combined effect of CO2decline and regolith removal controls the timing of the transition from a 41,000- to 100,000-year world. Our results suggest that the current CO2concentration is unprecedented over the past 3 million years and that global temperature never exceeded the preindustrial value by more than 2°C during the Quaternary.

Lake variations in response to climate change in the Tibetan Plateau in the past 40 years

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 534-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingjuan Liao ◽  
Guozhuang Shen ◽  
Yingkui Li
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The Past
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