Water level change in alpine lakes on Tibetan Plateau and its relation with climate

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), which is well known as "Asian Water Tower", contains many alpine lakes. Using satellite altimetry data, we examine seasonal and abrupt changes in water levels during 2003~2009 of 117 Tibetan lakes. The cluster analysis is applied to partition different lake variations and the links between different lake clusters and key climatic variables are further analyzed. The results show that the seasonal water-level variations performed evident spatio-temporal heterogeneity. Most lakes had significant increases in water-level in warm seasons and declines in cold seasons. Whereas, in the Changtang Plateau, lakes showed shrinkage in warm seasons due to low precipitation and strong evaporation, but showed expansion due to snow meltwater in cold seasons. The abrupt changes in water level for different clusters are shown to be tightly associated with special climate condition of large "P - T" differences. Copyright© (2013) by the Asian Association on Remote Sensing.