The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the highest and largest plateau in the world, with complex and competing cryospheric‐hydrologic‐geodynamic processes, is particularly sensitive to anthropogenic warming. The quantitative water mass budget in the TP is poorly known. Here we examine annual changes in lake area, level, and volume during 1970s–2015. We find that a complex pattern of lake volume changes during 1970s–2015: a slight decrease of −2.78 Gt yr⁻¹ during 1970s–1995, followed by a rapid increase of 12.53 Gt yr⁻¹ during 1996–2010, and then a recent deceleration (1.46 Gt yr⁻¹) during 2011–2015. We then estimated the recent water mass budget for the Inner TP, 2003–2009, including changes in terrestrial water storage, lake volume, glacier mass, snow water equivalent (SWE), soil moisture, and permafrost. The dominant components of water mass budget, namely, changes in lake volume (7.72 ± 0.63 Gt yr⁻¹) and groundwater storage (5.01 ± 1.59 Gt yr⁻¹), increased at similar rates. We find that increased net precipitation contributes the majority of water supply (74%) for the lake volume increase, followed by glacier mass loss (13%), and ground ice melt due to permafrost degradation (12%). Other term such as SWE (1%) makes a relatively small contribution. These results suggest that the hydrologic cycle in the TP has intensified remarkably during recent decades.

We review recent climate changes over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and associated responses of cryospheric, biospheric, and hydrological variables. We focused on surface air temperature, precipitation, seasonal snow cover, mountain glaciers, permafrost, freshwater ice cover, lakes, streamflow, and biological system changes. TP is getting warmer and wetter, and air temperature has increased significantly, particularly since the 1980s. Most significant warming trends have occurred in the northern TP. Slight increases in precipitation have occurred over the entire TP with clear spatial variability. Intensification of surface air temperature is associated with variation in precipitation and decreases in snow cover depth, spatial extent, and persistence. Rising surface temperatures have caused recession of glaciers, permafrost thawing, and thickening of the active layers over the permafrost. Changing temperatures, precipitation, and other climate system components have also affected the TP biological system. In addition, elevation‐dependent changes in air temperature, wind speed, and summer precipitation have occurred in the TP and its surroundings in the past three decades. Before projecting multifaceted interactions and process responses to future climate change, further quantitative analysis and understanding of the change mechanisms is required.

SummaryEvapotranspiration (ET) plays a critical role in linking the water and energy cycles but is difficult to estimate at regional and basin scales. In this study, we present a worldwide evaluation of nine ET products (three diagnostic products, three land surface model (LSM) simulations and three reanalysis-based products) against reference ET (ETwb) calculated using the water balance method corrected for the water storage change at an annual time scale over the period 1983–2006 for 35 global river basins. The results indicated that there was no significant intra-category discrepancy in the annual ET estimates for the 35 basins calculated using the different products in 35 basins, but some products performed better than others, such as the Global Land surface Evaporation estimated using the Amsterdam Methodology (GLEAM_E) in the diagnostic products, ET obtained from the Global Land Data Assimilation System version 1 (GLDAS 1) with the Community Land Model scheme (GCLM_E) in LSM simulations, and ET from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications reanalysis dataset (MERRA_E) in the reanalysis-based products. Almost all ET products (except MERRA_E) reasonably estimated the annual means (especially in the dry basins) but systematically underestimated the inter-annual variability (except for MERRA_E, GCLM_E and ET simulation from the GLDAS 1 with the MOSAIC scheme – GMOS_E) and could not adequately estimate the trends (e.g. GCLM_E and MERRA_E) of ETwb (especially in the energy-limited wet basins). The uncertainties in nine ET products may be primarily attributed to the discrepancies in the forcing datasets and model structural limitations. The enhancements of global forcing data (meteorological data, solar radiation, soil moisture stress and water storage changes) and model physics (reasonable consideration of the water and energy balance and vegetation processes such as canopy interception loss) will undoubtedly improve the estimation of global ET in the future

Despite the importance of precipitation and moisture transport over the Tibetan Plateau for glacier mass balance, river runoff and local ecology, changes in these quantities remain highly uncertain and poorly understood. Here we use observational data and model simulations to explore the close relationship between summer rainfall variability over the southwestern Tibetan Plateau (SWTP) and that over central-eastern India (CEI), which exists despite the separation of these two regions by the Himalayas. We show that this relationship is maintained primarily by ‘up-and-over’ moisture transport, in which hydrometeors and moisture are lifted by convective storms over CEI and the Himalayan foothills and then swept over the SWTP by the mid-tropospheric circulation, rather than by upslope flow over the Himalayas. Sensitivity simulations confirm the importance of up-and-over transport at event scales, and an objective storm classification indicates that this pathway accounts for approximately half of total summer rainfall over the SWTP.