A climate diagram atlas of Qingzang Plateau

Abstract

Climate diagram can be used to reflect visually observation data of temperature and precipitation as well as information of weather stations. It is an effective tool for studying the relationship between vegetation and climate. This paper aims to provide the atlas of climate diagrams of the Qingzang Plateau, based on the 30-year averaged observational records of national surface weather stations during 1951-1980 and 1981-2010, respectively, in order to understand the plateau climate feature of every vegetation region and to further explore the vegetationclimate relationships on the plateau. The atlas of climate diagrams of 205 weather stations on the Qingzang Plateau for both the two 30-year periods were produced according to the standard of climate diagrams in Vegetation of China. Results showed that the temperature and precipitation of the Qingzang Plateau were overall low in the whole year but relatively higher in summer, and differed obviously among different vegetation regions. The mean annual temperature and annual precipitation showed an increasing trend from the first 30-year period of 1951-1980 to the later one of 1981-2010. Although the number of weather stations in the western plateau is very sparse, this climate diagram dataset covers every vegetation regions of the plateau surface. This atlas can be used effectively to study the relationships between vegetation and climate, and conveniently to display the climate environment of the plateau.

Phytolith Production and Morphotypes in Modern Plants on the Tibetan Plateau

“…On the northern Tibetan Plateau, most plants grow during the growing season ( Che et al, 2014 ). Thus, the temperature and precipitation are the same during the phytolith accumulation in the sampling sites ( Hu et al, 2022 ). However, humidity showed to bea more critical factor in the growth of plants ( Fu and Shen, 2016 ).…”

“…The samples for this study mainly were collected on the northern high plateau of Tibet (above 4,000 m) in July and August 2018, where the vegetation type is the alpine meadow ( Tsering et al, 2021 ). The growing season is from June to August in the northern high plateau of Tibet, when the monthly temperature and precipitation could be above 10°C and 20 mm, respectively, ( Hu et al, 2022 ); the sampling sites in this region ( Figure 1 ) shared the same climate. Plant samples collected in this study were fully ripened and could be found with seeds (if not eaten by animals).…”