Climatic warming in the Tibetan Plateau during recent decades

Abstract

Adequate knowledge of climatic change over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) with an average elevation of more than 4000 m above sea level (a.s.l.) has been insufficient for a long time owing to the lack of sufficient observational data. In the present study, monthly surface air temperature data were collected from almost every meteorological station on the TP since their establishment. There are 97 stations located above 2000 m a.s.l. on the TP; the longest records at five stations began before the 1930s, but most records date from the mid-1950s. Analyses of the temperature series show that the main portion of the TP has experienced statistically significant warming since the mid-1950s, especially in winter, but the recent warming in the central and eastern TP did not reach the level of the 1940s warm period until the late 1990s. Compared with the Northern Hemisphere and the global average, the warming of the TP occurred early. The linear rates of temperature increase over the TP during the period 1955 -1996 are about 0.16°C/decade for the annual mean and 0.32°C/decade for the winter mean, which exceed those for the Northern Hemisphere and the same latitudinal zone in the same period. Furthermore, there is also a tendency for the warming trend to increase with the elevation in the TP and its surrounding areas. This suggests that the TP is one of the most sensitive areas to respond to global climate change.

Changes in daily climate extremes in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau during 1961–2005

“…Previous studies [Duan and Wu, 2006;Kang et al, 2007;Lin and Zhao, 1996; X. Liu and Chen, 2000;Niu et al, 2004] showed a significant warming in the TP during the last half century, in phase with the global trends derived from the increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions. The TP region is expected to be one of the most seriously impacted areas in the world by global warming effects [Chen et al, 2003;.…”

The carbon stock of alpine peatlands on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau during the Holocene and their future fate

“…During the past five decades, the QinghaieTibetan Plateau has experienced a universal and significant warming (Yao et al, 1997;Liu and Chen, 2000,;Duan et al, 2006;Li et al, 2010). The temperature has increased by 0.2 C per decade since 1960, with the warming trend even intensified since 2000 (Yao et al, 2007).…”

Responses of peat carbon at different depths to simulated warming and oxidizing

“…Climate warming, land use changes and hydrologic redistribution have changed local, regional and global carbon cycle (Hicks Pries and Schuur, 2013) and have the potential to shift peatlands from a carbon sink to a carbon source (Dorrepaal et al, 2009;Knoblauch et al, 2013;Schuur et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2013;Yan et al, 2014). High altitude areas where climate is sensitive to warming are experiencing a "much larger than average" increase in temperature (Knoblauch et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2012;Liu and Chen, 2000;Peng et al, 2014). Besides warming, water table drawdown is the other very important cause for the degradation of peatlands in recent decades on Zoige Plateau peatlands -one of the largest alpine peatlands in the world (Bai et al, 2013;Chen et al, 2010;Gao, 2006;Li et al, 2010).…”