(TibetanReview.net, Mar25’25) – Climate change over the Tibetan Plateau in the past 36 years has not only created risks for the local residents but also for China’s major infrastructure projects such as the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, reported China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Mar 24, citing recent research by Chinese scientists.
The change has had a notable impact on the Plateau’s lakes, which in turn has created risks for the local infrastructure and residents, they have said, publishing their findings Mar 18 in the international journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The rise in the lakes’ water volume was stated to have led to a gradual decrease in their salinity, a significant reduction in chlorophyll-a levels and enhanced microbial diversity and nutrient status.
“These changes have, in turn, affected local climate and livelihoods, leading to increased regional precipitation and posing risks of lakes overflowing and breaching, which could harm infrastructure, living conditions and pastoral areas,” Ju Jianting, co-lead author of the study and an associate professor at the institute, has said.
The study is stated to be the first to systematically quantify the long-term evolution of the physical, chemical and ecological characteristics of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, providing essential scientific evidence for evaluating regional water security and carbon cycling.
The study is stated to have found that over the past 36 years, the area of the lakes had expanded by 26%, the water volume increased by about 170 cubic kilometres and water transparency improved by 72%.
Zhu Liping, corresponding author of the study and a researcher at the institute, has said the lakes on the Tibetan Plateau store about 70% of the freshwater resources of the Asian Water Tower, directly influencing the water cycles of major rivers like the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
Over the study’s period of 1986-2022, the total area of lakes larger than 1 sq km on the plateau had increased from 37,000 sq km to 47,000 sq km, with water storage increasing by 169.7 cubic km, equivalent to 3.8 times the maximum capacity of China’s Three Gorges Reservoir.
“While the expansion of lakes has temporarily improved water quality, it could trigger a series of ecological chain reactions in the long run, potentially threatening infrastructure safety,” Zhu has said.
The study’s findings challenge “the traditional understanding that cleaner lakes are not necessarily carbon sinks,” Zhu has said, explaining that the interchanging roles between temperature and salinity have made the plateau lakes dynamically shift between carbon sources and sinks.
On this, co-lead author Ju has said: “The changes in the plateau lakes are a product of global warming. The exact impact of lake changes on global warming, whether it will result in carbon release or absorption, remains a topic of significant debate requiring further research, enhanced observation and the development of physical balance models.”
And while larger lake areas can help regulate local climates through increased precipitation, “the ongoing expansion of closed lakes poses two significant risks: overflow and breaching threatening infrastructure such as the Qinghai-Xizang Railway. And chronic salinity reduction could potentially alter existing carbon exchange patterns and exacerbate regional carbon emission fluctuations,” Ju has noted.