Lakes are commonly accepted as a sensitive indicator of regional climate change, including the Tibetan Plateau (TP). This study took the Ranwu Lake, located in the southeastern TP, as the research object to investigate the relationship between the lake and regional hydroclimatological regimes. The well-known Budyko framework was utilized to explore the relationship and its causes. The results showed air temperature, evapotranspiration and potential evapotranspiration in the Ranwu Lake Basin generally increased, while precipitation, soil moisture, and glacier area decreased. The Budyko space indicated that the basin experienced an obviously drying phase first, and then a slightly wetting phase. An overall increase in lake area appears inconsistent with the drying phase of the basin climate. The inconsistency is attributable to the significant expansion of proglacial lakes due to glacial melting, possibly driven by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Our findings should be helpful for understanding the complicated relationships between lakes and climate, and beneficial to water resources management under changing climates, especially in glacier basins.

Global warming in tandem with surface albedo reduction caused by black carbon (BC) deposition on glaciers accelerated glacier melting; however, their respective contributions remain unclear. Glaciers in the Qilian Mountains are crucial for the development of oases in the Hexi Corridor; however, their area has decreased by more than 20% over the past half-century. Thus, this study developed a dynamic deposition model for light-absorbing particles (LAPs), coupled with a surface energy and mass balance model. We comprehensively assessed the effects of BC and warming on the melting of a typical glacier in the Qilian Mountains based on the coupled model. BC on the glacier surface caused 13.1% of annual glacier-wide melting, of which directly deposited atmospheric BC reduced the surface albedo by 0.02 and accounted for 9.1% of glacier melting. The air temperature during 2000-2010 has increased by 1.5 degrees C relative to that during the 1950s, accounting for 51.9% of current glacier melting. Meanwhile, BC emission have increased by 4.6 times compared to those of the early Industrial Revolution recorded in an ice core, accounting conservatively for 6.3% of current glacier melting. Mitigating BC emissions has a limited influence on current glacier melting; however, in the long-term, mitigation should exert a noteworthy impact on glacier melting through the self-purification of glaciers.

Global warming and algal blooms have been two of the most pressing problems faced by the world today. In recent decades, numerous studies indicated that global warming promoted the expansion of algal blooms. However, research on how algal blooms respond to global warming is scant. Global warming coupled with eutrophication promoted the rapid growth of phytoplankton, which resulted in an expansion of algal blooms. Algal blooms are affected by the combined effects of global warming, including increases in temperatures, CO2 concentration, and nutrient input to aquatic systems by extreme weather events. Since the growth of phytoplankton requires CO2, they appear to act as a carbon sink. Unfortunately, algal blooms will release CH4, CO2, and inorganic nitrogen when they die and decompose. As substrate nitrogen increases from decompose algal biomass, more N2O will be released by nitrification and denitrification. In comparison to CO2, CH4 has 28-fold and N2O has 265-fold greenhouse effect. Moreover, algal blooms in the polar regions may contribute to melting glaciers and sea ice (will release greenhouse gas, which contribute to global warming) by reducing surface albedo, which consequently would accelerate global warming. Thus, algal blooms and global warming could form feedback loops which prevent human survival and development. Future researches shall examine the mechanism, trend, strength, and control strategies involved in this mutual feedback. Additionally, it will promote global projects of environmental protection combining governance greenhouse gas emissions and algal blooms, to form a geoengineering for regulating the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

Black carbon (BC) in snow plays an important role to accelerate snow melting. However, current studies mostly focused on BC concentrations, few on their size distributions in snow which affected BC's effect on albedo changes. Here we presented refractory BC (rBC) concentrations and size distributions in snow collected from Chinese Altai Mountains in Central Asia from November 2016 to April 2017. The results revealed that the average rBC concentrations were 5.77 and 2.82 ng g(-1) for the surface snow and sub-surface snow, which were relatively higher in the melting season (April) than that in winter (November-January). The mass median volume-equivalent diameter of rBC size in surface snow was approximately at 120-150 nm, which was typically smaller than that in the atmosphere (about 200 nm for urban atmosphere). However, there existed no specific mass median volume-equivalent diameter of BC size for sub-surface snow in winter. While during the melting season, the median mass size of rBC in sub-surface snow was similar to that in surface snow. Backward trajectories indicated that anthropogenic sourced BC dominated rBC in snow (70%-85%). This study will promote our understanding on BC size distributions in snow, and highlight the possible impact of BC size on climate effect.

Dust and black carbon (BC) can darken snow and ice surface and play pivotal roles in glacier mass loss. Thus, a quan-titative assessment of their contributions to glacier summer melting is critical. During the summer of 2018, surface snow and ice were sampled, and the albedo and mass balance were continuously measured in the ablation zone of Laohugou Glacier No. 12 in the western Qilian Mountains. The physical properties of dust and BC were measured in the laboratory, and their impacts on glacier surface albedo reduction and melting were simulated. The results indicate that the ice surface in the ablation zone was enriched with substantial amounts of particles, and the average particle concentrations of these samples were hundreds of times higher than those of fresh snow. The BC mass absorption cross-sections (MACs) ranged from 3.1 m2 g-1 at 550 nm for dirty ice to 4.6 m2 g-1 for fresh snow, largely owing to meltwater percolation and particle collapse. The spectral variations in dust MACs were significantly different in the visible light bands and near-infrared bands from those in the other areas. Moreover, the two-layer surface energy and mass balance model with the new albedo parameterization formula was validated and agreed well with the exper-imental measurements of spectral albedo, broadband albedo, and mass balance. BC and dust combined resulted in 26.7 % and 54.4 % of the total mass loss on the cleaner and dirtier (particle enriched) surfaces in the ablation zone, respectively, compared to particle-free surfaces, and although both impurities played vital roles, dust was the more prominent factor in accelerating glacier melting on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. This study emphasizes the impor-tance of dust in cryosphere changes where Tibetan glaciers are strongly affected by Asian dust deposition.

Global warming potentially increases precipitation and intensifies water exchange, thereby accelerating the hydrological cycle. The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is an Asian water tower in which the water budget varies and its anomaly exerts stress on resource availability. Few studies have quantified long-term water budgets across TP owing to scarcity of ground-based observations and uncertainties in remote sensing data. In this study, water budget components (i.e., precipitation, glacial melting [GM], evapotranspiration [ET], runoff, and soil moisture [SM] state) in TP are synthetically estimated for the past three decades. The water budget estimation benefits from a GM-coupled hydrological ensemble modeling, which is forced by nine precipitation products with seven from satellite methods. The results show that the ensemble modeling effectively captures the dynamics of runoff, ET, and terrestrial water storage. The long-term average annual water input (sum of precipitation and GM) was approximately 438 mm, with similar to 4 % contribution from GM, for which the annual ET and runoff take away was approximately 263 and 173 mm, respectively. From 1984 to 2015, the four water fluxes significantly increased with varying rates (2.3 mm/yr, precipitation; 0.9 mm/yr, GM; 1.5 mm/yr, ET; 1.1 mm/yr, runoff), which suggested an accelerating hydrological cycle. Particularly, increasing GM (similar to 5.8 mm/yr) in the Nyainqentanglha Mountains in southern TP induced high-yield runoff (>800 mm). These estimations aid in yielding robust solutions for water management in TP and neighboring regions. The accelerated hydrological cycle implies potential flooding risk and vulnerability of the hydrological system under climate change.

Season snow cover plays an important role in vegetation growth in alpine regions. In this study, we analyzed the spatial and temporal variations in seasonal snow cover and the start of the growing season (SOS) of alpine grasslands and preliminarily studied the mechanism by which snow cover affects SOS changes by modifying the soil temperature (ST) and soil moisture (SM) in spring. The results showed that significant interannual trends in the SOS, snow end date (SED), snow cover days (SCD), ST, and SM existed over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in China from 2000 to 2020. The SOS advanced by 2.0 d/10 a over the TP over this period. Moreover, the SOS showed advancing trends in the eastern and central parts of the TP and a delayed trend in the west. The SED and SCD exhibited an advancing trend and a decreasing trend in high-elevation areas, respectively, and the opposite trends in low-elevation areas. The ST showed a decreasing trend in low-elevation areas and an increasing trend in high-elevation areas. The SM tended to increase in most areas. The effects of the seasonal snow cover on the ST and SM indirectly influenced the SOS of alpine grasslands. The delayed SEDs and more SCD observed herein could provide increasingly wet soil conditions optimal for the advancement of the SOS, while less snow and shorter snow seasons could delay the SOS of alpine grasslands on the TP.

The relevance. Water erosion of soil is one of the priority environmental and economic problems of our time. This is due to the fact that soil is a limited resource, required for food production, carbon sequestration, regulation of water and nutrients, filtering pollutants, increasing biodiversity etc. Zonal soil types are degrading constantly as a result of population growth, deforestation, increase in arable land and climate change. Although water erosion is one the most serious cause of soil degradation, global patterns of erosion activity are still difficult to quantify. Various calculation and field measurements methods are currently used to assess the magnitude of soil washout. The data on soil washout from the slopes of arable land in the southern part of the Tomsk region, obtained by the various authors using different methods, are contradictory. The main aim: a brief overview of the factors in the development of soil erosion during snowmelt, assessment of the intensity and dynamics of erosion based on long-term field observations on arable land in the southern administrative districts of the Tomsk region and calculation methods. Objects: agricultural land (arable land) in the southeast of the Tomsk region. Methods: field measurements, computational method, laboratory and analytical methods. Results. Our observations have shown that the erosion hazard of agricultural land in the southeast of the Tomsk region is caused by a complex of interrelated natural and anthropogenic factors such as relief, underlying rocks and soils, climatic indicators, and land cultivation methods. The average annual washout from the slopes of arable land in the region over a 34-year observation period varies from 2-5 to 16-30 m(3)/ha per snowmelt, sometimes washout measure up 50-80 m(3)/ha. According to the calculated data, the mean annual values of the flush modulus fluctuate in the range of 4,0-9,4 m(3)/ha. Differences in soil washout assessments are explained by the imperfections of various methods that require improvement. The calculations do not take into account the uneven occurrence of the snow cover, microrelief, the presence of forest belts, and the shape of the slopes.

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) makes an important contribution to glacier melting in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau (HTP). Photobleaching can effectively reduce the light absorption ability of DOC, further changing its impact on glacier melting, which is not yet well researched in the HiP. Therefore, snowpit samples from the Bayi, Ganglongjiama (GLJM), Jiemayangong (JMYZ) and Demula (DML) glaciers were collected to study the influence of photobleaching on the light absorption ability of DOC and its impact on glacier melting. The results showed that the DOC concentration of snowpit samples, which was affected by the melting state and photobleaching, decreased from the northern HTP to the southern HIP. At an early stage of melting, the mass absorption cross- value at 365 nm (MAC 365 ) values showed a negative correlation with DOC concentrations in the snowpit at the JMYZ and DML glaciers, indicating that colored DOC tended to be concentrated in the snowpit during the melting process. With the aggravation of ablation, some snowpit samples in the GLJM and Bayi glaciers had both low concentrations and MAC 365 values of DOC due to the reduced influence of photobleaching on the light absorption ability of DOC. Similarly, two fluorescence components (one protein-like component and one hurnic-like component) were identified in the extracted DOC at the JMYZ and DML glaciers, while those components were not detected in the GLJM glacier. Based on the sources of fluorescent DOC and five-day backward air mass trajectories, long-distance transport of pollutants from South Asia was an important source of snowpit DOC in the southern HIP. In this study, photobleaching can effectively remove colored and fluorescent DOC from snowpit samples in the HIP, further reducing the radiation forcing and glacier melting caused by DOC. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cloud is an active component in the weather-climate system that modulates both the radiation balance and the water cycle of the earth system via physical, chemical, and radiative mechanisms. In this study, we used observations of meteorological variables recorded on the Laohugou Glacier No. 12 in the western Qilian Mountains during 2009-2017 to investigate the radiative properties of cloud and its impact on glacier melting. The quantified cloud fraction showed an evident seasonal cycle. The highest cloudiness typically occurred at 16:00 Beijing time, which was probably associated with the strength of local convection that produced frequent occurrence of low-level cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds. Most heavy precipitation events (>14 mm) occurred on overcast days, signified that at least half of the total precipitation could be attributed to transportation from meso- or large-scale atmospheric circulations. Relationships between modelled glacier melting, energy components and cloud fraction showed that clouds could importantly reduce glacier melting, the most important contributor to this process was the clouds impact on net shortwave radiation. Circulation analyses showed that similar to 7.8%, similar to 6.3%, and similar to 18.7% of overcast days could be clearly and uniquely attributed to Arctic air mass events, monsoon events, and westerlies events, respectively. The remaining overcast days (similar to 67.2%) were influenced by multiple circulations, e.g., westerlies-monsoon, westerlies-Arctic air mass, monsoon-Arctic air mass, and westerlies-monsoon-Arctic air mass interactions. Monsoon potentially contributes a lot to precipitation in the western Qilian Mountains, future work should aim to do more atmospheric circulation analyses combining with isotopic tracing when precipitation occurs during overcast days.