Variability and trends in water balance components of benchmark drainage basins on the Tibetan Plateau (WET) - BMBF program CAME "Central Asia: Monsoon dynamics and geo - ecosystems" [funded by BMBF] - Status: closed
Project staff:
Dr. Boris Thies
Description:
The project was part of the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Forschung & Entwicklung cooperative project: ´Tibet and Central Asia: Monsoon Dynamics and Geo-Ecosystems´. Recent changes in the Tibetan Plateau hydrological cycle are threatening local populations and impacts the livelihood of millions of people in surrounding regions. In cooperation with the TU Berlin, the Uni Jena, the Uni Tübingen, the RWTH Aachen and the TU Dresden as well as Chinese partners of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research and the Chinese Academy of Sciences the LCRS investigated the coupling of climate and hydrological cycles on the example of benchmark drainage basins on the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain ranges. The selected drainage basins are hydrological systems with glaciers, lakes, rivers and wetlands with characteristic structural properties for the Tibetan Plateau. The main objective of the WET project was the development of an integrative Model- and Research System, which combines numerical models and satellite observations for the monitoring of all relevant atmospheric, hydrological and glaciological variables. This system will provide and analyse spatially distributed data sets of the major hydrological components (precipitation, evaporation, snow accumulation and melt, river discharge) for the last decade and eventually become a tool for real-time monitoring and sensitivity analysis.
Publications and poster presentations:
2019 - Lehnert, L.; Meyer, H.; Obermeier, W.; Silva, B.; Regeling, B.; Thies, B. & Bendix, J. (2019): Hyperspectral Data Analysis in R: The hsdar Package. Journal of Statistical Software 89(12), 1-23.
2015 - Rüthrich, F.; Thies, B.; Reudenbach, C. & Bendix, J. (2015): Lake effects on cloud dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau.. Journal of Climate 28, 9080-9104.
2013 - Rüthrich, F.; Thies, B.; Reudenbach, C. & Bendix, J. (2013): Cloud Detection and Analysis on the Tibetan Plateau using Meteosat and CloudSat.. Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres 118, 10082–10099.
