Lake storage variation on the endorheic Tibetan Plateau and its attribution to climate change since the new millennium

Yao, Fangfang; Wang, Jida; Yang, Kehan; Wang, Chao; Walter, Blake A.; Crétaux, Jean-François

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aab5d3

Cited by 121 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 53 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

108

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is because the majority of endorheic lakes have experienced expansion due to the wetter climate and increasing glacier meltwater supply (Lutz et al, 2014). Studies based on satellite altimetry and gravimetry measurements also confirmed increasing lake water levels and storages due to more precipitation and more concentrated localized meltwater since the late 1990s (Song et al, 2013Yao et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2017). The rate of warming in the Tibetan Plateau is over 0.4°C/ decade from 1961-2001, which is about double the global rate (Hansen et al, 2010;Xu et al, 2008).…”

Section: 1029/2018ef001066mentioning

confidence: 95%

A Global Assessment of Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Increase Due to Surface Water Area Change

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Surface water, which is changing constantly, is a crucial component in the global water cycle, as it greatly affects the water flux between the land and the atmosphere through evaporation. However, the influences of changing surface water area on the global water budget have largely been neglected. Here we estimate an extra water flux of 30.38 ± 15.51 km 3 /year omitted in global evaporation calculation caused by a net increase of global surface water area between periods 1984–1999 and 2000–2015. Our estimate is at a similar magnitude to the recent average annual change in global evapotranspiration assuming a stationary surface water area. It is also comparable to the estimated trends in various components of the hydrological cycle such as precipitation, discharge, groundwater depletion, and glacier melting. Our findings suggest that the omission of surface water area changes may cause considerable biases in global evaporation estimation, so an improved understanding of water area dynamics and its atmospheric coupling is crucial to reduce the uncertainty in the estimation of future global water budgets.

show abstract

Section: 1029/2018ef001066mentioning

confidence: 95%

A Global Assessment of Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Increase Due to Surface Water Area Change

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, the substantial discrepancy between evapotranspiration over dry land and evaporation over sprawled lake water surface was not considered, which may induce unneglectable uncertainty in closing the basin-scale water budgeting. Taking Siling Co (a dramatically expanded large lake in the central TP) as an example, according to the prior studies (Song et al, 2013;Zhou et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2017a;Yao et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018b), the increasing rate of Siling Co water storage was approximately 1.3 Gt/year in the early 21st century while the inundation area expanded from 1876.16 km 2 in 2000 to 2,394.20 km 2 in 2015, with an areal expansion percentage of 27.61%. Based on the estimates in this study, the annual average lake evaporation and land evapotranspiration of the Siling Co basin are 767.19 mm (when the pan coefficient was set as 0.6) and 356.42 mm, respectively.…”

Section: The Implication Of Evaporated Water Loss In the Itpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of amplified evaporation due to lake expansion on the water budget across the inner Tibetan Plateau

Song

Sheng

Zhan

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past decades, changing climate has exerted pronounced influences on the cryo‐hydrological environment on the Tibetan Plateau. One major manifestation is the widespread lake expansions over Tibetan endorheic basins. The enlarged lake water surface areas are expected to significantly alter land‐atmosphere water fluxes, which in return may pose feedbacks to the climate system and hydrological processes. The goal of this study is to investigate the potential influences of the recent lake expansions on amplifying the evaporation flux over the basins of inner Tibetan Plateau (ITP). We detected that the ITP lakes have experienced a net inundation increase of 4,542.3 km2 during 2000–2015, about 95.6% of which was contributed by lakes larger than 1 km2. We further estimated the land and water evaporations based on multi‐source, available actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and potential evapotranspiration data sets, and in situ evaporation records. The differences between land ETa and lake water evaporation were employed to represent the evaporation alternation over newly inundated basin (named “land‐to‐lake” hereafter) areas. The land ETa was estimated based on the average of three commonly used gridded data sets while the over‐lake evaporation was calculated by the empirical correction of potential evaporation estimates by spatial interpolation of pan evaporation. A conservative estimate using the pan coefficient of 0.6 indicates that the newly inundated lake area may have led to a potential evaporation increase of 3.08 ± 1.08 Gt/year on the ITP. The increased evaporation flux is close to half of the recent annual growth rate of lake water storage in the ITP. Despite unneglectable uncertainties, our estimates initiate an important assessment of how the recent lake expansion across the ITP has influenced the local land‐atmosphere interactions and the water cycle. Accounting this evaporation amplification is crucial to reduce the uncertainty in estimating basin‐scale water budgets and projecting the regional water balance.

show abstract

“…For example, ICESat data were only available between 2003 and 2009. Therefore, as mentioned above, the existing water storage change studies have been primarily focused on a small number of lakes/reservoirs and limited to a relatively short time period [7].…”

Section: Major Assessment Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comprehensive quantifications of water storage change in lakes and reservoirs are still lacking at the large spatial and temporal scales [6,7]. Spatially, the existing assessments are mainly concentrated on: (1) large lakes such as Qinghai Lake [8,9], Poyang Lake [10], and Lake Victoria [5]; (2) a small number of lakes and reservoirs, for example, 11 large lakes in South Tibet [4], 27 reservoirs in South Asia [11], 30 lakes in Tibetan Plateau [12], and 114 lakes larger than 50 km 2 in Tibetan Plateau [13]; (3) specific regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, due to its unique climatic and topographic condition, significant ecological effects, and sensitive responses to climate change [14,15], accumulating a series of important research findings [7,12,[14][15][16][17][18]. Long-term analyses can enrich our knowledge about the history and current situation of lakes and reservoirs and advance our understanding of the mechanism of water storage change [5].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Long-term analyses can enrich our knowledge about the history and current situation of lakes and reservoirs and advance our understanding of the mechanism of water storage change [5]. Yet, current assessments have been limited to a short time period, including analyses at several time points [12] and analyses over the last decade, as in the 2002-2015 period [7].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Assessment of Water Storage Change in China’s Lakes and Reservoirs over the Last Three Decades

Fang

Wan

et al. 2019

Remote Sensing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lakes and reservoirs are essential elements of the hydrological and biochemical cycles, considered sentinels of global climate change. However, comprehensive quantifications of their water storage changes (∆V) at a large spatiotemporal scale are still rare. Here, we integrated a global surface water dataset and SRTM digital elevation models, both available from Google Earth Engine platform at a spatial resolution of 30 m, to evaluate ∆V for a total of 760 lakes and reservoirs across China at an annual timescale since 1984. The results indicated that (1) the aggregated water storage went through a slight increase of 41.5 Gt (1.7 Gt/yr) during 1985-2005, a significant decrease of 100 Gt (−20.6 Gt/yr) during 2005-2009, and then increased by 136.3 Gt (21.3 Gt/yr) during 2009-2015.(2) The increasing trend was largely attributed to lakes and reservoirs in the Tibetan Plateau Lake Zone, and the decreasing trend was mainly due to the North and Northwest Lake Zone, with little variations observed for the Northeast and Southwest Lake Zones. (3) Qinghai lake was associated with the largest increase (18.3 Gt) and Poyang lake presented the largest decline (−9.2 Gt). The results can help advance our understanding of the impact of climate change and improve future projection.Water storage changes in lakes and reservoirs present significant spatial and temporal variability, reflecting heterogeneity of local conditions in terms of climate, hydrology, topography, land cover and human disturbance. Monitoring water storage change can help to understand the dynamics of the global hydrological cycle and predict the impact of global changes on water resources [5]. Assessing water storage changes in lakes and reservoirs is consequently becoming increasingly important for the sustainable management of water resources. Limitation of Current AssessmentsHowever, until now, the spatio-temporal characteristics of water storage change have remained inadequately assessed. Comprehensive quantifications of water storage change in lakes and reservoirs are still lacking at the large spatial and temporal scales [6,7]. Spatially, the existing assessments are mainly concentrated on: (1) large lakes such as Qinghai Lake [8,9], Poyang Lake [10], and Lake Victoria [5]; (2) a small number of lakes and reservoirs, for example, 11 large lakes in South Tibet [4], 27 reservoirs in South Asia [11], 30 lakes in Tibetan Plateau [12], and 114 lakes larger than 50 km 2 in Tibetan Plateau [13]; (3) specific regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, due to its unique climatic and topographic condition, significant ecological effects, and sensitive responses to climate change [14,15], accumulating a series of important research findings [7,12,[14][15][16][17][18]. Long-term analyses can enrich our knowledge about the history and current situation of lakes and reservoirs and advance our understanding of the mechanism of water storage change [5]. Yet, current assessments have been limited to a short time period, including analyses at several time points [12] and analyses ov...

show abstract

Lake storage variation on the endorheic Tibetan Plateau and its attribution to climate change since the new millennium

Cited by 121 publications

References 53 publications

A Global Assessment of Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Increase Due to Surface Water Area Change

A Global Assessment of Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Increase Due to Surface Water Area Change

Impact of amplified evaporation due to lake expansion on the water budget across the inner Tibetan Plateau

Assessment of Water Storage Change in China’s Lakes and Reservoirs over the Last Three Decades

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About