Abstract
A better understanding of the water and energy cycles at climate scale in the Third Pole Environment is essential for assessing and understanding the causes of changes in the cryosphere and hydrosphere in relation to changes of plateau atmosphere in the Asian monsoon system and for predicting the possible changes in water resources in South and East Asia. This paper reports the following results: (1) A platform of in situ observation stations is briefly described for quantifying the interactions in hydrosphere-pedosphere-atmosphere-cryosphere-biosphere over the Tibetan Plateau. (2) A multiyear in situ L-Band microwave radiometry of land surface processes is used to develop a new microwave radiative transfer modeling system. This new system improves the modeling of brightness temperature in both horizontal and vertical polarization. (3) A multiyear (2001–2018) monthly terrestrial actual evapotranspiration and its spatial distribution on the Tibetan Plateau is generated using the surface energy balance system (SEBS) forced by a combination of meteorological and satellite data. (4) A comparison of four large scale soil moisture products to in situ measurements is presented. (5) The trajectory of water vapor transport in the canyon area of Southeast Tibet in different seasons is analyzed, and (6) the vertical water vapor exchange between the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere in different seasons is presented.
Highlights
The seasonal heating on the Tibetan Plateau has been thought to exert important controlling effects on the evolution of the Asian monsoon, which in turn controls the precipitation, weather and climate in South and East Asia (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5]) and affects the security of the water resources of 1.2 billion people in Asia
In the CLIMATE-Third Pole Environment (TPE) project, we proposed three sub-projects organized as work packages (WP), and each WP is divided into a number of tasks to address linkages between different water cycle components in the energy and mass conservation framework given by Equations (1)–(5)
It had been previously reported that many remote sensing products of soil moisture did not compare favourably with in situ observation on the Tibetan plateau [11,18], and the most advanced ECMWF
Summary
The seasonal heating on the Tibetan Plateau has been thought to exert important controlling effects on the evolution of the Asian monsoon, which in turn controls the precipitation, weather and climate in South and East Asia (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5]) and affects the security of the water resources of 1.2 billion people in Asia. Asian monsoon [6,7] Despite these progresses in modelling and analysis, it remains a major challenge to understand the role of the Tibetan plateau in the Asian monsoon, being it topographic or thermal heating [8,9]. The authors of [10] have reported major uncertainties in coarse resolution satellite and model products of soil moisture based on in situ observations on the Tibetan Plateau.
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