[Music] [Music] the Tibetan Plateau is also known as the roof of the world the name the roof of the world is not given lightly the formation of the Tibetan Plateau started around 55 million years ago due to a collision of continents the region of present-day India collided with Tibet forming the most extensive mountain region in the world the Tibetan Plateau has vast Peaks that are the highest in the world its immense length spans over 2.2 million square kilometers which is around five times the size of California and an average elevation of 4500 meters its enormous length and size can be seen from outer space this has not gone unnoticed by the world its grand nature let the UCLA Geography Department and lead scientists to explore various questions how can we examine the change of the physical features biological features and cultural landscape of Tibet what technology and methods are out there so we can monitor the change that surrounds this phenomena as temperatures begin to increase scientists and geographers around the world study how this will impact Tibet's environments Tibet is a unique landscape because it is mostly uninhabited by humans this allows for a unique opportunity for geographers to see how climate change is affecting a region largely undisturbed an NSF grant allowed UCLA geography department to combine previous research focusing on individual areas of expertise into one collaborative project in order to predict the future climate of Tibet's professor Jung kangju of the UCLA Geography Department leads the effort in researching climate change in this NSF project we will put this thing together we will study those together in CUDA global warming how those thoughts process those things affect the East Asia climate and also we try to do for the future how the future would be give a more reliable answer in the process we particularly we want to develop more more realistic a climate a model can address the issue today the society want to know a plateau is a flat elevated land form that rises above its surrounding area the tibetan plateau surrounds all of the Tibet Autonomous Region and most of the ching hai' province and extends into western Sichuan province and the southern youger autonomous region of Xinjiang around the southern edge of the plateau lies the Himalayas which is the greatest mountain range on earth it is 6,000 to 7,000 meters above sea level at the center of this range are 11 of the world's highest peaks Chomolungma also known as Mount Everest is 8,848 point 13 meters making it the world's highest point truly making it the roof of the world due to its immense length and height the Tibetan Plateau has a varied climate the region's climate is shaped largely by the winds which interact in affect the landscape of Tibet the westerlies winds make their way across the northwest to the southeastern region of the Tibetan Plateau the South Asian monsoon arrives from the southwest moving its way to the northeast while the monsoon also flows from the South China Sea reaching the eastern Tibetan Plateau as these modern westerlies and monsoon interact their chain effects land surface over the Tibetan Plateau as temperatures around the world continue to increase there is evidence of it affecting the Tibetan Plateau the region is heating up twice as fast as the global average and the temperature has increased around point five four degrees Fahrenheit per decade temperatures can drop below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit and can even go as cold as the poles in the winter in the summer temperatures can skyrocket to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit the change in climate surrounding the plateau effects the natural glaciers in the region the Tibetan Plateau contains some of the largest volume of ice that is outside of the polar regions this has led some to refer to the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau as the third Pole recent advances in satellite and ground station data have led to a new frontier in climate modeling using new and sophisticated computer systems scientists can create the most comprehensive climate models to date in this region potentially showing what the Tibet climate will look like in the next 50 years climate modeling is an attempt to recreate the earth in a computer program based on the physical and mathematical principles found on earth historically climate models have been an oversimplification of various physical and dynamic processes that occur today climate models include various factors such as ocean flow and chemical processes atmosphere and land interaction and greenhouse gases that contribute to a more accurate depiction of the earth in order to calculate the complex processes around the globe the Earth's surface is divided into many small grid boxes each grid box is designated at different categories such as farmland urban desert and more once this is established scientists must consider vertical as well as horizontal interaction between the atmosphere land and the ocean the earth systems are all described by mathematical equations once the real world climate is replicated the same process can be used to predict the future climate with different values to try and develop such a comprehensive Earth System model to represent the real world an interdisciplinary collaboration has brought together scientists and geographers to engineer the most realistic climate models which take into consideration these multiple real-world factors such as water carbon nitrogen cycles ecosystem aerosol land-use change and many more one of the most challenging aspects in recreating the Tibetan Plateau is trying to develop a realistic approach to snow and permafrost land in the region traditionally the water cycle functions with ocean and land evaporation followed by precipitation which contributes to surface flow and groundwater flow which makes its way back to the ocean this is a challenge because in the plateau closed lakes do not flow back to the ocean and instead evaporates and create salty lakes climate modeling is used to find specific patterns in the environment to define processes such as this to find these specific patterns researchers must reconstruct the past climate monitor the current climate and then compare the past and current climate to find specific patterns and changes occurring on the Tibetan Plateau we say that a line SS in my group we means that we look at the observational data and motor data and we use advanced mathematics and statistics and computing tools to make analysis or make also fancy matrix operations statistics inference and then try to find out the characteristics of the Tibetan Party's climate for instance so can we find is the pattern of Indian monsoon can we find the pattern of West needs can we find a pattern of Eastern Asian monsoon that goes from Shanghai Easter genesee back into China and so this numerical NSS they come out with numerical results of those patterns and use characteristics the neon can tangle arrange to the north of the middle section of the Y are losin boo Valley has more than 5000 square kilometers of glaciers alone which is by far more than the Glacial area of the European Alps glaciers are a body of moving ice and along the northwestern region of the Tibetan Plateau they are increasing in the southern side of the Tibetan Plateau along the Himalayan mountains the glaciers have been shrinking the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau act as reservoirs of fresh water when summer arrives the glaciers release a massive amount of water that philip rivers and streams the plateaus glaciers are a vital sustenance to the world the ice creates some of Asia's largest rivers ten rivers originate from the Tibetan Plateau and stretch all across Asia the Yangtze the yellow the Mekong and the Ganges rivers have historically nourished civilization they provide nourishment presently to the dry lands of Pakistan all the way to northern China which is 3,000 miles away around 2 billion people and a third of the world's population depend on the snow and ice of the plateau region professor Jung Wei Sheng studies the impact that the surrounding lakes and rivers have on the Tibetan environment over the past several decades of both the glaciers and lakes on that plateau changes dramatically especially for the lakes the lake changes over the tobacco is a consider to be the most dynamic area on the earth and because the most of the lakes on the plateau located in the indoor basis that means there is no water flow out of those lakes and making those Lakes really sensitive to the climate change the increase that temperature would increase the your operation but in the meantime over the past twenty years or the Tibetan Plateau the temperature the precipitation also increased largely you know so as a result the net balance between the precipitation and evaporation and also glacier Mountain at that making the Tibetan Lakes increasing climate modeling allows researchers to see how the melting of glaciers causes an increase in precipitation evaporation and lake expansion in the Tibetan region as temperatures increase the glaciers begin to shrink and release their water glaciers surrounding Tibet have shrunk 15% over the course of 30 years the result is a rapid increase in the amount and size of lakes in the region the lakes are the fastest growing in the world the ensuing result is visible clearly from space an example of this rapid lake expansion is the case of siling lake and namu lake in 1976 siling Lake located on the neon can tangle a mountain was the size of 1800 square kilometers and namu lake was 1900 square kilometers over the subsequent years the lakes expanded over 30 percent siling lake expanded at a much higher rate than namu lake and by the Year 2005 surpassed it even though the lakes are the fastest growing on earth there are some lakes that have shrunk in the Yalu zenbu River Basin located on the southern region of the Tibetan Plateau although these lakes are shrinking in the chantin plateau the northern region the rivers are significantly increasing along with the expanding lakes there has been some change to the precipitation patterns of the region most of the precipitation surrounding the Tibetan Plateau has either increased or stayed the same however there has been a decrease in precipitation along the Himalayas the southern region of Tibet or the prepetition in Tibetan Plateau it's basically it's in most part is increased but in Himalaya mountain area so that apart reputation will decrease but overall the reputation will increase by about 10% and in meantime because the temperature will mean a prepetition change so in most a part of the Tibetan Plateau the gracious was a retreat because it's melt and also in particularly in the sauce East when Oporto when the prepetition actually was reduced so that apart so the glaciers were retreating but the for the where's the part of the Tibetan Plateau because the preparation increased and the temperature warming is not as strong as other part so actually the glaciers will increase slightly but the overall it will reduce and so there are many photos of people took in past 15 years shows how fast but gracious were was retreating and the intimacy Roth because we have a more glacial melting snow melting who has a little more preparation overall so the runoff in general intervener potato is in Greece precipitation as well as temperature have a strong impact on the vegetation of the region some of the main vegetation zones include alpine grassland meadow desert and forest professor thomas Gillespie and his team worked together and used the latest satellite data to recreate the vegetation around this region what we do in geography is we use satellite imagery from spaceborne sensors in particular at 1 kilometer resolution you can look at change on the Tibetan Plateau over the last 30 years and a 250 meter resolution you can look at changes in vegetation across the Tibetan Plateau at about 250 meter resolution what we do is we have this green this index called NDVI and it just uses the visible and infrared bands and what it does is it tells you the greenness or the amount of photosynthetic activity and plant productivity looking at how the greenness has changed across the plateau within these parks we can see for instance patterns that occur and most of these patterns do look like they're related to population so we have maps of population of Tibet that go back to about 25 years and examining how people are moving throughout the Tibetan Plateau lets us understand how the vegetation is changing the tibetan plateau contains some of the highest vegetation zones in the world the plants in the Tibetan Plateau experience different blooms and greenery based on their location the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau experiences an earlier bloom whereas the southwestern region experiences a later one in the last decade one of these vegetation zones located on the Tibetan Plateau is called the Alpine an Alpine plant is vegetation that grows above the Timberline at 4,500 metres above sea level this altitude gives way to a variety of species of shrubs and herbaceous plants alpine plants often face harsh conditions of the Alpine environment such as low temperatures and dry weather the Alpine vegetation is unique because of its adaptive nature but the grasslands are what make up most of the Tibetan vegetation seventy percent of the total land area is made up of grasslands the grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau are diverse due to the immense size of this region they are unique because they can withstand harsh winds and varying climate these grasslands are a vital sustenance to inhabitants in this region the marshy meadows are scattered all around the large grasslands where there are small pools and low-lying ground the grass that sprouts in these areas sprout earlier than everywhere else in addition to vegetation a new factor contributes greatly to the environment of the Tibetan Plateau region humans where humans decide to live plays a critical role in the environment humans affect the climate in a multitude of ways recently land-use change plays an increasingly important role on the future environment China has designated four of the world's largest nature reserves in the Tibetan Plateau inhabitants and nomads were removed from the designated areas resulting in a dramatic land-use change in an area larger than Japan so when we study nature reserves on the Tibetan Plateau what we do is use satellites to see what the vegetation was like before the nature reserves were created and then what happened after these nature's it's kind of interesting about China and Tibet in general is that there's a international chord where every country has to have 18 percent protected areas China being a huge densely populated country the best place to do this is in high elevation areas where there's very few people so about 15 percent of the protected areas in China occur on the Tibet this is where they created the world's largest Asian reserve the species that inhabit the Tibetan Plateau are diverse this land holds over 798 species of vertebrates and 2305 species of insects 125 of these species are under government protection including two animals distinct to the plateau the wild yak and the Snow Leopard the yak in the Tibetan region is both domesticated and wild wild yaks are found mostly in the Shanghai province these furry animals live 3,000 to 5,500 metres in different vegetations of the Tibetan Plateau just like the wild yak the Snow Leopard adapted to the harsh environment of the Tibetan Plateau the elusive Snow Leopard has a beautiful white coat with soft brown spots which allows them to blend into the snowy environment of the Tibetan winter snow leopards have thick fur and small rounded ears that are perfect for living in a harsh cool environment these animals are found at very high altitudes between 3,000 and 5,000 metres high the snow leopards live on the northern side of Tibet and unfortunately are listed as endangered there are fewer than 7500 snow leopards globally like the animals inhabiting this land the people of Tibet have adapted to this harsh climate people have been inhabiting the lands of Tibet for over 8,000 years the earliest inhabitants of these lands were pastoral people they herded goats cattle and sheep they soon learned how to irrigate their lands and raised herds now today's inhabitants come from of of backgrounds which include Tibetans men pas lopa Han Chinese hoy Sherpa and a few den people the native Tibetans are still the majority of inhabitants climate modeling is used internationally to understand our surrounding environment many climate models from different countries have been inconsistent in accurately projecting the future climate of Tibet the one consistency among all these models has been an increase in warming throughout the region if conservation measures are not taken the only way to reduce or decrease the warming is to limit greenhouse gases in the environment the model from UCLA shows that without conservation efforts the warming may increase by one or two degrees in the next decade even though this does not sound like much this small increase can throw off entire ecosystems precipitation will also change based on this model with an increase in overall precipitation throughout the plateau but this is not the entire story certain areas will experience drastic changes in precipitation resulting in drought whereas other regions will have an increase of precipitation as models continue to improve and become more advanced climate researchers will be able to make more localized and accurate predictions overall as a whole the model indicated in the future if we have a more conservation measures temperature for instance in a given temperature may be on the increase one one degree or two you know but if you don't control the greenhouse gas that could be increased much more for preparation it's in general speaking it's who wishes a little increase overall but that was in larger you know in the over cabinet pronto as I mention in a pasta overall tipping apart or has increased but for some area some parts trepidation with decrease very automatically for a period of time the harsh environment and lack of continuous observations in the third Pole region kept researchers from understanding the different processes in the Tibetan Plateau in the past decades scientists and funding agencies from all over the world have made great efforts to establish projects and networks to carry out joint interdisciplinary research in the third pole region these efforts will help society better prepare for understanding changes in the environment [Music] you
