Editorial: Climatic and Associated Cryospheric and Hydrospheric Changes on the Third Pole

Climatic and Associated Cryospheric and Hydrospheric Changes on the Third PoleThe Third Pole (TP), known as the "Asian Water Tower," is a high-elevation region of Asia centered on the Tibetan Plateau.The TP is home to around 100,000 km 2 of glaciers, comprising the largest volume of ice outside the Antarctic and Arctic.The TP lies at the headwaters of many large Asian rivers (e.g., Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus, Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Salween, Amu Darya, and Syr Darya) and serves as the main water supply for millions of inhabitants in downstream countries.The high-elevation region is widely covered by snow, glaciers, lakes, permafrost, and seasonally frozen ground, and exerts a profound climatic influence on adjacent and distant regions.The TP has been getting warmer and wetter during the past several decades, as indicated by significant air temperature rises, and spatiotemporally, heterogeneous precipitation increases-particularly since the 1980s.The TP warming, which is above the global average rate, could be associated with variations in precipitation and decreases in snow depth, extent, and persistence.The warming and wetting climate has been closely associated with glacier retreat, lake expansion, permafrost thawing, and thickening of the active layers over the permafrost.This research topic aims to cover recent climate changes over the TP and its associated impacts on the cryosphere and hydrosphere.The studies address changes in surface air temperature, precipitation, seasonal snow cover, mountain glaciers, permafrost, lakes, and river runoff, and examine how these changes are linked to climate change across different spatial scales (from a catchment to the whole TP).Results from these studies will improve our understanding of cryosphere-hydrosphere-atmosphere interactions over the TP.This research topic includes three comprehensive reviews in TP cryohydrology (one about the discipline as a system, and two about permafrost), which describe research progress in these topics and provide insightful perspectives on the recent advancement of in situ observations, satellite remote sensing, as well as process-based modeling.This is a multidisciplinary special issue bridging the gaps in climatology, hydrology, cryosphere, geochemistry, and remote sensing sciences.Dai et al. suggest that a large alpine lake (Lake Nam Co.) can be an important regulator of regional climate (e.g., precipitation) over the TP, based on the WRF (weather research forecasting model) sensitivity experiments for the year 2008.Their study indicates that the lake cooling effect can cause a reduction in the over-lake summer precipitation by 45-70%, while the lake warming effect can enhance the autumn precipitation by 60% over the lake and surroundings.

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