DOI: 10.5194/hess-24-3835-2020
论文题名: Survival of the Qaidam mega-lake system under mid-Pliocene climates and its restoration under future climates
作者: Scherer D.
刊名: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
ISSN: 1027-5606
出版年: 2020
卷: 24, 期: 7 起始页码: 3835
结束页码: 3850
语种: 英语
Scopus关键词: Climate change
; Glacial geology
; Lakes
; Restoration
; Annual water balance
; Climate condition
; Environmental change
; Geological timescales
; Hyper-arid climate
; Physically based
; Surrounding regions
; Terrestrial water storage
; Reservoirs (water)
; environmental restoration
; future prospect
; glaciation
; lake ecosystem
; paleoenvironment
; paleogeography
; Pleistocene
; Pliocene
; restoration ecology
; timescale
; water budget
; water storage
; China
; Qaidam Basin
; Qinghai
英文摘要: The Qaidam Basin in the north of the Tibetan Plateau has undergone drastic environmental changes during the last millions of years. During the Pliocene, the Qaidam Basin contained a freshwater mega-lake system although the surrounding regions showed increasingly arid climates. With the onset of the Pleistocene glaciations, lakes began to shrink and finally disappeared almost completely. Today, hyperarid climate conditions prevail in the low-altitude parts of the Qaidam Basin. The question of how the mega-lake system was able to withstand the regional trend of aridification for millions of years has remained enigmatic so far. This study reveals that the mean annual water balance, i.e. the mean annual change in terrestrial water storage in the Qaidam Basin, is nearly zero under present climate conditions due to positive values of net precipitation in the high mountain ranges and shows positive annual values during warmer, less dry years. This finding provides a physically based explanation for how mid-Pliocene climates could have sustained the mega-lake system and that near-future climates not much different from present conditions could cause water storage in reservoirs, raising lake levels and expanding lake areas, and may even result in restoration of the mega-lake system over geological timescales. The study reveals that a region discussed as being an analogue to Mars due to its hyperarid environments is at a threshold under present climate conditions and may switch from negative values of long-term mean annual water balance that have prevailed during the last 2.6 million years to positive ones in the near future. © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Citation statistics:
资源类型: 期刊论文
标识符: http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/162628
Appears in Collections: 气候变化与战略
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作者单位: Scherer, D., Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, 12165, Germany
Recommended Citation:
Scherer D.. Survival of the Qaidam mega-lake system under mid-Pliocene climates and its restoration under future climates[J]. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences,2020-01-01,24(7)