The Tibetan Plateau (TP) plays a significant role in the Earth's climate system. This letter examines the nighttime lake surface water temperature (LSWT) of 374 lakes (≥10 km² each) over the TP for the past 15 years (2001–2015). An overall warming trend (0.037 °C/year) is found and it is consistent with the warming air temperature (0.036 °C/year) over the TP, with the vast majority of the lakes (70%, with 28% of which are significant) showing warming (0.076 °C/year) and the rest (30%, with 37% of which are significant) showing cooling (−0.053 °C/year). This astonishing contrast was controlled by different water sources recharging these lakes: (1) warming LSWT due to increased precipitation (central and northern TP) or permafrost degradation (northwestern TP) and (2) cooling LSWT due to increased glacier meltwater (southwestern TP), revealing LSWT a sensitive indicator to climate change that triggered different regional responses in precipitation, permafrost, and glacier changes over the TP. This study helps improve our understanding of high‐altitude lakes and their changing mechanisms under the warming climate.

Root-zone soil moisture (RZSM) is an important variable in land–atmosphere interactions, notably affecting the global climate system. Contrary to satellite-based acquisition of surface soil moisture, RZSM is generally obtained from model-based simulations. In this study, in situ observations from the Naqu and Pali networks that represent different climatic conditions over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and a triple collocation (TC) method are used to evaluate model-based RZSM products, including Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) (versions 3.5a and 3.5b), Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) (versions 2.1 and 2.2), and the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalysis (ERA5). The evaluation results based on in situ observations indicate that all products tend to overestimate but could generally capture the temporal variation, and ERA5 exhibits the best performance with the highest R (0.875) and the lowest unbiased RMSE (ubRMSE; 0.015 m³ m⁻³) against in situ observations in the Naqu network. In the TC analysis, similar results are obtained: ERA5 has the best performance with the highest TC-derived R (0.785) over the entire TP, followed by GLEAM v3.5a (0.746) and GLDAS-2.1 (0.682). Meanwhile, GLEAM v3.5a and GLDAS-2.1 outperform GLEAM v3.5b and GLDAS-2.2 over the entire TP, respectively. Besides, possible error causes in evaluating these RZSM products are summarized, and the effectiveness of TC method is also evaluated with two dense networks, finding that TC method is reliable since TC-derived R is close to ground-derived R, with only 6.85% mean relative differences. These results using both in situ observations and TC method may provide a new perspective for the soil moisture product developers to further enhance the accuracy of model-based RZSM over the TP. Significance Statement: The purpose of this study is to better understand the quality and applicability of GLEAM, GLDAS, and ERA5 RZSM products over the TP using both in situ observations and the triple collocation (TC) method, making it better applied to climate and hydrological research. This study provides four standard statistical metrics evaluation based on in situ observations, as well as the reliable metric, that is, correlation coefficient (R) derived from TC method, and highlights that TC-based evaluation could supplement the ground-based validation, especially over the data-scarce TP region.

Surface soil moisture (SM) plays an essential role in the water and energy balance between the land surface and the atmosphere. Low spatio-temporal resolution, about 25–40 km and 2–3 days, of the commonly used global microwave SM products limits their application at regional scales. In this study, we developed an algorithm to improve the SM spatio-temporal resolution using multi-source remote sensing data and a machine-learning model named the General Regression Neural Network (GRNN). First, six high spatial resolution input variables, including Land Surface Temperature (LST), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), albedo, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Longitude (Lon) and Latitude (Lat), were selected and gap-filled to obtain high spatio-temporal resolution inputs. Then, the GRNN was trained at a low spatio-temporal resolution to obtain the relationship between SM and input variables. Finally, the trained GRNN was driven by the high spatio-temporal resolution input variables to obtain high spatio-temporal resolution SM. We used the Fengyun-3B (FY-3B) SM over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) to test the algorithm. The results show that the algorithm could successfully improve the spatio-temporal resolution of FY-3B SM from 0.25° and 2–3 days to 0.05° and 1-day over the TP. The improved SM is consistent with the original product in terms of both spatial distribution and temporal variation. The high spatio-temporal resolution SM allows a better understanding of the diurnal and seasonal variations of SM at the regional scale, consequently enhancing ecological and hydrological applications, especially under climate change.

Surface soil moisture is a key variable in the exchange of water and energy between the land surface and the atmosphere, and critical to meteorology, hydrology, and ecology. The Tibetan Plateau (TP), known as “The third pole of the world” and “Asia’s water towers”, exerts huge influences on and sensitive to global climates. In this situation, longer time series of soil moisture can provide sufficient information to understand the role of the TP. This paper presents the first comprehensive dataset (2002–2015) of spatio-temporal continuous soil moisture at 0.25° resolution, based on satellite-based optical (i.e. MODIS) and microwave (ECV) products using a machine learning method named general regression neural network (GRNN). The dataset itself reveals significant information on the soil moisture and its changes over the TP, and can aid to understand the potential driven mechanisms for climate change over the TP.

Gross primary productivity (GPP) is an important parameter that represents the productivity of vegetation and responses to various ecological environments. The Greater Khingan Mountain (GKM) is one of the most important state-owned forest bases, and boreal forests, including the largest primeval cold-temperature bright coniferous forest in China, are widely distributed in the GKM. This study aimed to reveal spatiotemporal vegetation variations in the GKM on the basis of GPP products that were generated by the Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) program from 1982 to 2015. First, we explored the spatiotemporal distribution of vegetation across the GKM. Then we analyzed the relationships between GPP variation and driving factors, including meteorological elements, growing season length (GSL), and Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR), to investigate the dominant factor for GPP dynamics. Results demonstrated that (1) the spatial distribution of accumulated GPP (AG) in spring, summer, autumn, and the growing season varied due to three main reasons: understory vegetation, altitude, and land cover; (2) interannual AG in summer, autumn, and the growing season significantly increased at the regional scale during the past 34 years under climate warming and drying; (3) interannual changes of accumulated GPP in the growing season (AGG) at the pixel scale displayed a rapid expansion in areas with a significant increasing trend (p < 0.05) during the period of 1982–2015 and this trend was caused by the natural forest protection project launched in 1998; and finally, (4) an analysis of driving factors showed that daily sunshine duration in summer was the most important factor for GPP in the GKM and this is different from previous studies, which reported that the GSL plays a crucial role in other areas.

Rainfall information is a prerequisite to and plays a vital role in driving hydrological models. However, limited by the observation methods, the obtained precipitation data, at present, are still too coarse. In this study, a new downscaling method was proposed to obtain high spatial resolution (~1 km/hourly) precipitation estimates based on Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) data at hourly scale. Compared with original IMERG data, the downscaled precipitation results showed the similar spatial patterns with those of original IMERG data, but with finer spatial resolution. In addition, the downscaled precipitation estimates were further analyzed to quantify their improvements using the Coupled Routing and Excess STorage (CREST) model across Ganjiang River basin. Compared with the observed streamflow, the downscaled precipitation results showed satisfying hydrological performance, with Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient of Efficiency (NSCE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Relative Bias (BIAS), and Correlation Coefficient (CC). The improvement in terms of four statistic metrics in terms of streamflow simulation also indicated great potential of hydrological utility for the downscaled precipitation results.