Linking atmospheric pollution to cryospheric change in the Third Pole region: current progress and future prospects

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau and its surroundings are known as the Third Pole (TP). This region is noted for its high rates of glacier melt and the associated hydrological shifts that affect water supplies in Asia. Atmospheric pollutants contribute to climatic and cryospheric changes through their effects on solar radiation and the albedos of snow and ice surfaces; moreover, the behavior and fates within the cryosphere and environmental impacts of environmental pollutants are topics of increasing concern. In this review, we introduce a coordinated monitoring and research framework and network to link atmospheric pollution and cryospheric changes (APCC) within the TP region. We then provide an up-to-date summary of progress and achievements related to the APCC research framework, including aspects of atmospheric pollution's composition and concentration, spatial and temporal variations, trans-boundary transport pathways and mechanisms, and effects on the warming of atmosphere and changing in Indian monsoon, as well as melting of glacier and snow cover. We highlight that exogenous air pollutants can enter into the TP’s environments and cause great impacts on regional climatic and environmental changes. At last, we propose future research priorities and map out an extended program at the global scale. The ongoing monitoring activities and research facilitate comprehensive studies of atmosphere–cryosphere interactions, represent one of China's key research expeditions to the TP and the polar regions and contribute to the global perspective of earth system science.

Impacts of atmospheric transport and biomass burning on the interannual variation in black carbon aerosols over the Tibetan Plateau

“…The TP has a large number of glaciers and a wide coverage of snow. Although atmospheric BC in the TP is among the lowest in the world, BC there can alter the climate (Lau et al, 2010;Jiang et al, 2017), ecosystem (Kang et al, 2019), and hydrology (Barnett et al, 2005) in the TP, consequently influencing the living environment of billions of people in the world. Atmospheric BC is an important factor driving the surface warming in the TP due to its strong absorption of solar radiation (He et al, 2014a).…”

“…Due to weak anthropogenic activities and biomass burning, the contribution of local emissions to atmospheric BC in the TP is low (Zhang et al, 2015). Concentrations of atmospheric BC in the TP are greatly influenced by the long-range transport of BC from foreign regions (Kopacz et al, 2011;Kang et al, 2019). Previous studies have investigated the pathways of BC transport to the TP (Cao et al, 2011) and some of them suggested that South Asia and East Asia are two main source regions of atmospheric BC in the TP (Lu et al, 2012).…”

The Response of Parameterized Orographic Gravity Waves to Rapid Warming over the Tibetan Plateau

“…There are many important consequences of TP warming. For instance, the area of glaciers over the TP shrank markedly, which affected the run-off of many prominent rivers in Asia [1,23]. The boreal Although generated at the terrain surface, OGWs are capable of propagating upward to the middle atmosphere where the wave amplitude grows markedly owing to the decrease of air density with height [10].…”

“…There are many important consequences of TP warming. For instance, the area of glaciers over the TP shrank markedly, which affected the run-off of many prominent rivers in Asia [1,23]. The boreal spring sensible heat source over the TP, which had a great influence on the Asian summer monsoon [24], exhibited a decreasing trend, due largely to weakening of the surface wind [25,26].…”

Magnetic characteristics of lake sediments in Qiangyong Co Lake, southern Tibetan Plateau and their application to the evaluation of mercury deposition

“…Even in Lhasa, the capital and most developed city of this region, the air quality has been good for many years (Yin et al, 2019). However, under the action of Westerlies and the Asian monsoon (Zhu et al, 2015;Yao et al, 2017;Guo et al, 2019), pollutants from outside the TP are transported into the region by dry and wet deposition (Li et al, 2007;Cong et al, 2010;Kang et al, 2019). For example, persistent organic pollutants (Zhang et al, 2003;Wang et al, 2016), heavy metals (Yang et al, 2010;Kang et al, 2016;Huang et al, 2019), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Xie et al, 2014), organic molecular tracers (Wan et al, 2017), and black carbon (Xu et al, 2009;Li et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2018;Chen et al, 2019) have been detected in aerosol particles, dust, snow, surface soil, ice cores, and lake sediments.…”