Abstract
Although the impact of El Niño–Southern Oscillation on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is reflected through stable isotopes of precipitation and ice cores, the hydroclimate response of TP lakes to El Niño–Southern Oscillation is seldom investigated. Here we show that significant lake water deficit occurred on the central TP (CTP) due to a dramatic decrease in precipitation 2016 El Ni/2016 El Niño event, followed by extreme lake water surplus in 2016 and 2017 over most of the TP (except the eastern CTP). Similar but weaker lake shrinkage and afterward expansion can also be found during historical El Niño events. Further exploration reveals that the CTP dry anomaly during El Niño events tends to bridge the dry anomalies over India and northern China, thereby forming a dry zone along the northwestern edge of the Asian monsoon domain. This study may shed light on the prediction of lake level changes on the TP.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 5889-5898 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 16 2019 |
Funding
This research has been supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA2006020102), the National Natural Science Foundation of China(41571071 and 21661132003), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the CAS (2017099). LEGOS data and Landsat images are downloaded from the Hydroweb service (http://hydroweb.theia‐land.fr) and the USGS website (https://glovis.usgs.gov/), respectively. We also thank J.‐F. Crétaux and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comment that greatly improved this paper. We also thank all the members who took part in the fieldwork. All original data presented in this paper are publicly available via the Third Pole Environment Database (http://en.tpedatabase.cn/data/ lakelevel.jsp). This research has been supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA2006020102), the National Natural Science Foundation of China(41571071 and 21661132003), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the CAS (2017099). LEGOS data and Landsat images are downloaded from the Hydroweb service (http://hydroweb.theia-land.fr) and the USGS website (https://glovis.usgs.gov/), respectively. We also thank J.-F. Cr?taux and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comment that greatly improved this paper. We also thank all the members who took part in the fieldwork. All original data presented in this paper are publicly available via the Third Pole Environment Database (http://en.tpedatabase.cn/data/lakelevel.jsp).
Keywords
- 2015/2016 El Niño
- extreme lake level changes
- Tibetan Plateau