Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (Jul 2009)

Recent advances on the study of atmosphere-land interaction observations on the Tibetan Plateau

  • H. Ishikawa,
  • S. Wang,
  • W. Ma,
  • K. Yang,
  • M. Li,
  • Z. Zhu,
  • X. Chen,
  • L. Zhong,
  • F. Sun,
  • Z. Hu,
  • R. Wu,
  • Y. Wang,
  • Y. Ma

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 7
pp. 1103 – 1111

Abstract

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As a unique geological and geographical unit, the Tibetan Plateau dramatically impacts the world's environment and especially controls climatic and environmental changes in China, Asia and even in the Northern Hemisphere. Tibetan Plateau, therefore, provides a field laboratory for studying global change. With support from various agencies in the People's Republic of China, a Tibetan Observation and Research Platform (TORP) is now implementing. Firstly the background of the establishment of the TORP, the establishing and monitoring plan of long-term scale (5–10 years) of the TORP has been introduced. Then the preliminary observational analysis results, such as the characteristics of land surface heat fluxes and CO<sub>2</sub> flux partitioning (diurnal variation and inter-monthly variation etc.), the characteristics of atmospheric and soil variables, the structure of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) and the turbulent characteristics have also been shown in this paper.