scholarly journals Does the climate warming hiatus exist over the Tibetan Plateau?

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anmin Duan ◽  
Zhixiang Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Warming Hiatus

scholarly journals Elevational Movement of Vegetation Greenness on the Tibetan Plateau: Evidence from the Landsat Satellite Observations during the Last Three Decades

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Liheng Lu ◽  
Xiaoqian Shen ◽  
Ruyin Cao
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Vertical Movement ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Upward Movement ◽  
Vegetation Growth ◽  
Vegetation Greenness ◽  
Mountainous Regions ◽  
Vegetation Activities

The Tibetan Plateau, the highest plateau in the world, has experienced strong climate warming during the last few decades. The greater increase of temperature at higher elevations may have strong impacts on the vertical movement of vegetation activities on the plateau. Although satellite-based observations have explored this issue, these observations were normally provided by the coarse satellite data with a spatial resolution of more than hundreds of meters (e.g., GIMMS and MODIS), which could lead to serious mixed-pixel effects in the analyses. In this study, we employed the medium-spatial-resolution Landsat NDVI data (30 m) during 1990–2019 and investigated the relationship between temperature and the elevation-dependent vegetation changes in six mountainous regions on the Tibetan Plateau. Particularly, we focused on the elevational movement of the vegetation greenness isoline to clarify whether the vegetation greenness isoline moves upward during the past three decades because of climate warming. Results show that vegetation greening occurred in all six mountainous regions during the last three decades. Increasing temperatures caused the upward movement of greenness isoline at the middle and high elevations (>4000 m) but led to the downward movement at lower elevations for the six mountainous regions except for Nyainqentanglha. Furthermore, the temperature sensitivity of greenness isoline movement changes from the positive value to negative value by decreasing elevations, suggesting that vegetation growth on the plateau is strongly regulated by other factors such as water availability. As a result, the greenness isoline showed upward movement with the increase of temperature for about 59% pixels. Moreover, the greenness isoline movement increased with the slope angles over the six mountainous regions, suggesting the influence of terrain effects on the vegetation activities. Our analyses improve understandings of the diverse response of elevation-dependent vegetation activities on the Tibetan Plateau.

Soil and vegetation feedbacks on climate change in high mountain ranges of the Tibetan Plateau__using near and mid-infrared spectroscopy (FT-NMIRS) in soil properties, phosphorus (P) as example

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuonan Cao ◽  
Peter Kühn ◽  
Thomas Scholten
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Soil Quality ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
P Fractions ◽  
Mid Infrared ◽  
Warming Rate

<p>The Tibetan Plateau is the third-largest glaciated area of the world and is one of the most sensitive regions due to climate warming, such as fast-melting permafrost, dust blow and overgrazing in recent decades. In the past 50 years, the warming rate on the Tibetan Plateau is higher than the global average warming rate with 0.40 ± 0.05 °C per decade. The climate warming is most distinct in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, implying increasing air and surface temperatures as well as duration and depth of thawing. The main ecological consequences are a disturbed vegetation cover of the surface and a depletion of nutrient-rich topsoils (Baumann et al., 2009, 2014) coupled with an increase of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly CO<sub>2</sub> (Bosch et al., 2017). Due to the extreme environmental conditions resulting from the intense and rapid tectonic uplift, highly adaptive and sensitive ecosystem have developed, and the Plateau is considered to be a key area for the environmental evolution of Earth on regional and global scales, which is particularly sensitive to global warming (Jin et al., 2007; Qiu, 2008). Climate warming and land-use change can reduce soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks as well as soil nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) contents and soil quality. Many species showed their distributions by climate-driven shifts towards higher elevation. In Tibetan Plateau, however, the elevational variations of the alpine grassland are rare (Huang et al., 2018) and it is largely unknown how the grass line will respond to global warming and whether soils play a major role. With this research, the hypothesis is tested that soil quality, given by SOC, N and P stocks and content, is a driving factor for the position and structure of the grass line and that soil quality is one of the major controls of biodiversity and biomass production in high-mountain grassland ecosystems.</p><p>A Fourier transformation near and mid-infrared spectroscopy (FT-NMIRS) should be used to measure soil P fractions rapid and for large numbers of soil samples, and analyze environmental factors, including temperature, precipitation, soil development, soil fertility, and the ability of plants to adapt to the environmental impact of climate using FT-NMIRS.</p><p>We explored first near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in soils from grassland on the Tibetan Plateau, northwestern China and extracted P fractions of 196 samples from Haibei Alpine Meadow Ecosystem Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences, at four depths increments (0-10 cm 10-20 cm 20-40 cm and 40-70 cm) with different pre-nutrient additions of nitrogen (N) an P. The fractionation data were correlated with the corresponding NIRS soil spectra and showed significant differences for depth increments and fertilizer amendments. The R<sup>2</sup> of NIRS calibrations to predict P in traditional Hedley fractions ranged between 0.12 and 0.90. The model prediction quality was higher for organic than for inorganic P fractions and changed with depth and fertilizer amendment. The results indicate that using NIRS to predict the P fractions can be a promising approach compared with traditional Hedley fractionation for soils in alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau.</p>

The responses of dominant tree species to climate warming at the treeline on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau

2018 ◽  
Vol 425 ◽  
pp. 21-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingming Guo ◽  
Yuandong Zhang ◽  
Xiaochun Wang ◽  
Fengxue Gu ◽  
Shirong Liu
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Eastern Edge

scholarly journals Climate warming and decreasing total column ozone over the Tibetan Plateau during winter and spring

Tellus B ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 23415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiankai Zhang ◽  
Wenshou Tian ◽  
Fei Xie ◽  
Hongying Tian ◽  
Jiali Luo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Total Column Ozone ◽  
Column Ozone ◽  
Total Column

scholarly journals Quantifying streamflow and active groundwater storage in response to climate warming in an alpine catchment on the Tibetan Plateau

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Lin ◽  
Man Gao ◽  
Jintao Liu ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Hu Liu
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Storage Capacity ◽  
Flow Analysis ◽  
Summer Rainfall ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Early Winter ◽  
Frozen Ground ◽  
Groundwater Storage

Abstract. Climate warming is changing streamflow regimes and groundwater storage in cold alpine regions. In this study, a headwater catchment named Yangbajain in the Lhasa River basin on the Tibetan Plateau is adopted as the study area for quantifying streamflow changes and active groundwater storage in response to climate warming. The catchment is characterized by alpine glacier and frozen ground which covers about 11 % and 86 % of the total area, respectively. The changes in streamflow regimes (including quickflow and baseflow) and climate factors are evaluated based on hydro-meteorological observations from 1979 to 2013. Then active groundwater storage in autumn and early winter is quantified by recession flow analysis assuming nonlinearized outflow from aquifers into streams. The results show that annual streamflow increases significantly at a rate of about 12.30 mm/10a during this period. The significant increase of annual air temperature compared with nonsignificant variation of annual precipitation indicates that the climate warming takes responsibilities to the increase of streamflow. It is believed that the increased streamflow is mainly fed by glacier meltwater, which has led to over 25 % loss of the total glacial volume in the past 50 years (1960–2009) in this catchment. Moreover, the significant increase of annual baseflow at a rate of about 10.95 mm/10a is the dominant factor for the increase of the total streamflow. Through recession flow analysis, we find that recession coefficient K and active groundwater storage S in autumn and early winter increase significantly at the rates of about 7.70 (mm0.79d−0.21)/10a and 19.32 mm/10a during these years. The increase of active groundwater storage can partly be explained by frozen ground degradation, which lead to the enlargement of groundwater storage capacity and accommodate more summer rainfall and meltwater in the wide and flat valley, and then slowly release them into streams in the following seasons. Thus, it is reasonable to attribute the increase of baseflow and the slowdown of baseflow recession process in autumn and early winter to the enlargement of groundwater storage capacity. Through quantifying streamflow changes and active groundwater storage in response to warming-induced changes, this study provides a perspective to clarify the way of glacial retreat and frozen ground degradation on hydrological processes.

scholarly journals Plant uptake of CO2 outpaces losses from permafrost and plant respiration on the Tibetan Plateau

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (33) ◽  
pp. e2015283118
Author(s):  
Da Wei ◽  
Yahui Qi ◽  
Yaoming Ma ◽  
Xufeng Wang ◽  
Weiqiang Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Current Status ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Warming Climate ◽  
Manipulative Experiments ◽  
Warming Rate ◽  
Use Efficiency ◽  
Plant Respiration

High-latitude and high-altitude regions contain vast stores of permafrost carbon. Climate warming may result in the release of CO2 from both the thawing of permafrost and accelerated autotrophic respiration, but it may also increase the fixation of CO2 by plants, which could relieve or even offset the CO2 losses. The Tibetan Plateau contains the largest area of alpine permafrost on Earth. However, the current status of the net CO2 balance and feedbacks to warming remain unclear, given that the region has recently experienced an atmospheric warming rate of over 0.3 °C decade−1. We examined 32 eddy covariance sites and found an unexpected net CO2 sink during 2002 to 2020 (26 of the sites yielded a net CO2 sink) that was four times the amount previously estimated. The CO2 sink peaked at an altitude of roughly 4,000 m, with the sink at lower and higher altitudes limited by a low carbon use efficiency and a cold, dry climate, respectively. The fixation of CO2 in summer is more dependent on temperature than the loss of CO2 than it is in the winter months, especially at higher altitudes. Consistently, 16 manipulative experiments and 18 model simulations showed that the fixation of CO2 by plants will outpace the loss of CO2 under a wetting–warming climate until the 2090s (178 to 318 Tg C y−1). We therefore suggest that there is a plant-dominated negative feedback to climate warming on the Tibetan Plateau.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document