Significant Climatic Change on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Caused by Global Warming

Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a zone sensitive in climatic change in China and even the whole world. According to the research of the meteorological data of the recent 50 years, the climate of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is obvisouly changed due to the global warming.

In the past 50 years, the significant climate change of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is mainly displayed in two aspects: the rate of the rising of temperature here obviously exceeds that of the other regions of the world; the total precipitation increased but it distributes more nonuniform in time and space.

The statistics provided by the Weather Bureau of Qinghai Province indicates that the average annual surface temperature rises 0.33? every 10 years, among which the surface temperature of Qaindam Basin rises 0.44? each 10 years. The Weather Bureau of Tibet Autonomous Region also found that the average annual surface temperature keeps rising with 0.3? per ten years.

The extremely high temperature of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau keeps rising due to the obvious climatic change. In 2006, the extremely high temperature of the 13 stations among the 39 state official meteorological stations settled on Tibet Plateau broke through the historical record. In the winter of 2006, the average temperature of the Source Area of Three Rivers (the Yangtze River, Yellow River and Lancang River) was 7.9?. It is 3.7? higher than the annual average temperature of this area between 1971 and 2000. It is said that the winter in 2006 is the warmest winter of that area in history. It is recorded that the extremely high temperature of the 10 stations among the 28 state official meteorological stations settled in Tibet broke through the historical record since October 2007.

The National Evaluation Report on Climatic Change published by Ministry of Science and Technology, China Meteorological Administration and Chinese Academy of Science indicated that the average surface temperature rises 1.1? in the past 50 years, which means the surface temperature rises 0.22? in each 10 years.

The surface temperature rises more rapidly on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau than the average level of China. It is even more obvious than the global warming speed – 0.13? each ten years. The scientists have confirmed that the climatic change on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is at least 5 years ahead of the climatic change in the other regions above the sea level. The existence of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is of significant influence for the general atmospheric circumambulation of the Northern Hemisphere. It has been a control zone of the atmosphere system of Asia and the Northern Hemisphere for its motive power and heating power.