(TibetanReview.net, May20’26) – Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau have once been stable carbon sinks, preventing global warming gas from escaping to the atmosphere to destroy the ozone layer there. But now, due to climate warming, these lakes are undergoing a dramatic transformation, and rapidly becoming significant sources of greenhouse gases, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences study May 19.
This was the main takeaway from a new review published in Watershed Ecology and the Environment, reported newswise.com May 19.
The study was stated to have analyzed nearly 400 scientific papers, revealing that rising temperatures are accelerating permafrost thaw and glacier retreat.
This process feeds the expansion of “thermokarst” lakes—new water bodies formed by melting permafrost. These lakes are critical hotspots, as they release ancient, long-frozen carbon as both carbon dioxide (CO2) and, more critically, as methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than CO2, the report said.
“Our review shows that the role of these plateau lakes is not uniform,” Dr Yang Liu, the corresponding author of the study, has said. “They have differentiated into distinct types, ranging from significant carbon sinks to powerful carbon sources. This finding underscores the urgent need to move beyond simple assessments and adopt typology-based management strategies.”
The research, which provides critical scientific support for regional green development and global carbon neutrality strategies, turning what were once “neglected carbon sources” into “manageable carbon sinks, highlights the central role of microorganisms, which act as the “core engine” driving these emissions, the report said.
Microbes decompose organic matter and cycle key nutrients like carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. Notably, while warming extends the growing season for algae (which absorb CO2), it simultaneously supercharges microbial decomposition. This dual effect risks flipping the entire system from a net carbon absorber to a net emitter, creating a dangerous positive feedback loop that exacerbates global warming.
The macro level solution, which the study does not seem to talk about directly, obviously lies in making efforts to reverse global warming. The main contributing factors to global warming in Tibet obviously lie in massive increase in Han Chinese immigration encouraged by Beijing, ecology-wrecking hydropower and railway projects involving investments of hundreds of billions of dollars, and environment-devastating mining projects that have pockmarked the geography of the Tibetan Plateau today.
But the study appears to have taken climate warming as given, focusing only on managing greenhouse gas releases on that basis.
The authors of the study, which was supported by the Key Project of the Natural Science Foundation of Tibet Autonomous Region, have called for an integrated, multi-factor model that incorporates microbial functional genes, nutrient coupling, and climate drivers.
“Such a model would allow for ‘lake-type zoning’ management—protecting lakes that remain carbon sinks while mitigating emissions from thermokarst and other high-emitting lakes,” Liu has added.