Thousands of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) play a critical role in the regional water cycle, weather, and climate. In recent years, the areas of TP lakes underwent drastic changes and have become a research hotspot. However, the characteristics of the lake-atmosphere interaction over the high-altitude lakes are still unclear, which inhibits model development and the accurate simulation of lake climate effects. The source region of the Yellow River (SRYR) has the largest outflow lake and freshwater lake on the TP and is one of the most densely distributed lakes on the TP. Since 2011, three observation sites have been set up in the Ngoring Lake basin in the SRYR to monitor the lake-atmosphere interaction and the differences among water-heat exchanges over the land and lake surfaces. This study presents an eight-year (2012–19), half-hourly, observation-based dataset related to lake–atmosphere interactions composed of three sites. The three sites represent the lake surface, the lakeside, and the land. The observations contain the basic meteorological elements, surface radiation, eddy covariance system, soil temperature, and moisture (for land). Information related to the sites and instruments, the continuity and completeness of data, and the differences among the observational results at different sites are described in this study. These data have been used in the previous study to reveal a few energy and water exchange characteristics of TP lakes and to validate and improve the lake and land surface model. The dataset is available at National Cryosphere Desert Data Center and Science Data Bank.

Wind disasters are responsible for significant physical destruction, injury, loss of life, and economic damage. This study examined the extreme wind triggering mechanism over a typical mountain area with complex terrain, i.e., Dali city in Yunnan Province on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in China. Using the observation data, we first optimized the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model configuration and parametrization schemes for better simulating the wind in this area using a 1-month simulation. Then, the triggering mechanism of extreme wind was investigated by performing a series of sensitive experiments based on a typical extreme wind case. The results indicate that terrain uplift is critical for triggering the local 8–9-scale (the wind velocity between 17.2 and 24.4 m/s) extreme winds over high topography regions. When a large-scale atmospheric circulation is passing, accompanied with regional terrain lifting, the instantaneous wind velocity can reach 9- to 10-scale (the mean wind velocity between 20.8 and 28.4 m/s), causing broken power lines. These results suggest that it is essential to avoid sites where these factors can affect the operation of power transmission lines, or to establish warning systems in the existing systems.

Evapotranspiration plays a decisive role in the whole oasis ecosystem and is an important factor to maintain the ecological stability of oases. To quantitatively analyze the evapotranspiration differences of oases at different scales and the expansion of urbanization, it is necessary to compare and discuss them at different time scales. In this study, the spatial and temporal characteristics of evapotranspiration of Zhangye Oasis, Jinta Oasis, and Ejina Oasis in the Heihe River basin were analyzed by using the remote sensing dataset of daily surface evapotranspiration of 100 m resolution from 2010 to 2016. The difference in evapotranspiration intensity in different oases was analyzed, and the influences of irrigation and urbanization expansion on evapotranspiration were discussed. The conclusion is as follows: Zhangye Oasis is the largest oasis in the area and, compared with other oases, due to the largest proportion of wetland and farmland in the underlying surface, the intensity of evapotranspiration is also the largest, reaching 650 mm/year on average. There is no obvious annual change; the range of evapotranspiration changes fluctuates between positive and negative 60 mm/year. Jinta Oasis began to decline after 2012; the evapotranspiration value dropped from 620 mm/tear to 560 mm/year, while Ejina Oasis showed a slight increase after 2014. In the irrigation stage, the evapotranspiration intensity increased significantly. Especially in the peak season of crop growth, the evapotranspiration after irrigation increased by 4 mm/day compared with that before irrigation. The evapotranspiration in urban and oasis areas is different in summer: compare that of 2010 with 2016—the evapotranspiration intensity of the expanding towns in the northeast direction decreased by about 50 mm/month, the northwest expanding towns decreased by about 110 mm/month. There was no obvious annual change in evapotranspiration in the urban area. With the expansion of urbanization, the evapotranspiration intensity in oases decreased. The results of this study provide some reference for the study of oasis irrigation activities and urbanization expansion.

The characteristics of intense diurnal precipitation occurring beneath the South Asian High (SAH) are diagnosed in the summer monsoon season from 2010 to 2015 using observational data. The diagnostics indicate that summer nighttime rainfall events in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau can intensify towards the end of the monsoon period. By defining a transition index to identify the transition day during which the episodes of diurnal convection start to decline, daily thermodynamic properties and precipitation from each year were composited before and after the transition date. The analysis reveals that warmer air, increased moisture, and stronger upward velocity are present in the atmosphere before the transition day, potentially elevating nighttime convective precipitation. Enhanced upward velocity that is present through the two months prior to transition date coincides with the timing of the peak SAH, while weakened upward velocity afterwards coincides with its subsequent retreat. The large-scale lift due to terrain-ambient air interaction underneath the SAH and the increased moisture content can enhance the potential for diurnal convection, which lends support to the nighttime peak of rainfall. This feature persists until the transition date, after which the SAH starts to retreat.

The Loess Plateau is one land-atmosphere coupling hotspot. Soil moisture has an influence on atmospheric boundary layer development under specific early-morning atmospheric thermodynamic structures. This paper investigates the sensitivity of atmospheric convection to soil moisture conditions over the Loess Plateau in China by using the convective triggering potential (CTP)—humidity index (HI_low) framework. The CTP indicates atmospheric stability and the HI_low indicates atmospheric humidity in the low-level atmosphere. By comparing the model outcomes with the observations, the one-dimensional model achieves realistic daily behavior of the radiation and surface heat fluxes and the mixed layer properties with appropriate modifications. New CTP-HI_low thresholds for soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks are found in the Loess Plateau area. By applying the new thresholds with long-time scales sounding data, we conclude that negative feedback is dominant in the north and west portion of the Loess Plateau; positive feedback is predominant in the south and east portion. In general, this framework has predictive significance for the impact of soil moisture on precipitation. By using this new CTP-HI_low framework, we can determine under what atmospheric conditions soil moisture can affect the triggering of precipitation and under what atmospheric conditions soil moisture has no influence on the triggering of precipitation.