Climate Change Over the Tibetan Plateau and Surroundings on Decadal to Sub-Orbital Timescales and Its Driving Mechanisms

Dear Colleagues,

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is regarded as the “Third Pole of the Earth” and “Asian Water Tower”, and it has an important role in global climate change and human activities, as well as the safety of the living environment. The TP’s surface system and barrier function, as well as its natural landscapes like glaciers, lakes, and vegetation, have all undergone significant changes over the past 50 years under the influence of global climate warming, which has created challenges for the human living environment and regional sustainable development in the TP and its surrounding regions. Therefore, there is an urgent need to investigate climate change and its driving mechanisms in this high-altitude region, along with their effects on the global environment. The extensive aeolian sediments, lakes, peat, ice cores, and stalagmites found throughout the TP provide valuable geological records for reconstructing climatic evolution over various timescales, which is helpful for understanding these issues.

This Special Issue aims to compile research on climate changes across various timescales and their driving mechanisms, utilizing a range of sedimentary records (as previously outlined) and proxies, such as physicochemical and environmental magnetic data, from the TP and its surrounding regions, including the Chinese Loess Plateau and arid Central Asia. We are particularly interested in studies that explore dust activity, precipitation/moisture evolution, and temperature change, and we also encourage contributions focused on contemporary processes. These insights will significantly enhance our understanding of both current and future environmental conditions in this crucial region.

We invite submissions of original research and review papers on a range of topics, including but not limited to the following:

• Climate changes across Holocene, millennial, centennial, and interannual timescales;
• Evolution of westerlies and the Asian monsoon and their regional impacts;
• Dust release, transport, deposition, evolution, and their effects;
• Reconstruction of paleotemperature histories;
• Numerical simulations of climate change driven by external and internal factors;
• Sediment dating techniques, including OSL and AMS ¹⁴C methods.

We look forward to receiving manuscripts that address these topics.

Dr. Junhuai Yang
Prof. Dr. Fuyuan Gao
Guest Editors

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