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The Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau possesses the largest alpine lake system, which plays a crucial role in the land‐atmosphere interaction. We report first observations on the thermal and radiation regime under ice of the largest freshwater lake of the Plateau. The results reveal that freshwater lakes on the Tibetan Plateau fully mix under ice. Due to strong solar heating, water temperatures increase above the maximum density value 1–2 months before the ice break, forming stable thermal stratification with subsurface temperatures >6°C. The resulting heat flow from water to ice makes a crucial contribution to ice cover melt. After the ice breakup, the accumulated heat is released into the atmosphere during 1–2 days, increasing lake‐atmosphere heat fluxes up to 500 W m−2. The direct biogeochemical consequences of the deep convective mixing are aeration of the deep lake waters and upward supply of nutrients to the upper photic layer. Plain Language Summary: The Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau possesses the largest alpine lake system, which plays a crucial role in the land‐atmosphere interaction. Data on thermal properties of Tibetan lakes during the ice‐covered season are extremely scarce. The first observations on the thermal and radiation regime under ice of the largest freshwater lake of the Plateau reveal that freshwater (and apparently the majority of brackish) lakes gain an extremely large amount of solar radiation penetrating the highly transparent ice cover. As a result, lakes fully mix under ice and get heated up to >6°C. The accumulated heat makes a crucial contribution to ice cover melt. The quick release of the heat to the atmosphere during 1–2 days after the ice breakup strongly increases lake‐atmosphere heat fluxes, potentially affecting regional weather conditions. Warm and well‐mixed conditions are favorable for aquatic life in the extreme environment of Tibet. Key Points: An abnormal thermal regime under the ice cover of Tibetan lakes is revealedThe lakes get heated above their maximum density temperature by extremely high level of solar radiation penetrating the ice coverThe stored heat shortens the ice‐covered period and is quickly released into the atmosphere after ice‐off, affecting local climate [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) lakes are sensitive to climate change due to its seasonal ice cover, but few studies have paid attention to the freeze-thaw process of TP lakes and its key control parameters. By combining 216 simulation experiments using the LAKE2.0 model with the observations, we evaluated the effects of ice and snow albedo, ice (Kdi) and water (Kdw) extinction coefficients on the lake ice phenology, water temperature, sensible and latent heat fluxes. The reference experiment performs well in simulating the lake temperature, with a small positive bias increasing with depth, but it underestimates the ice thickness. The increase of ice albedo, snow albedo and Kdi induce a significant decrease in water temperature. Compared with the latent heat, the sensible heat flux is more sensitive to these three parameters. The ice thickness increases almost linearly with the increase of ice albedo but decreases with the increase of Kdi. The ice thickness and frozen days vary little with Kdw, but increasing Kdw can decrease the water temperature. Compared with the ice albedo, the Kdi and snow albedo have a large effect on the number of frozen days. This study brings to light the necessity to improve the parameterizations of the TP lakes freeze-thaw process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) is characterized by a cold climate and a large number of lakes. The long ice season necessitates study of the widespread ice covers in the region. An unprecedented multidisciplinary field campaign was conducted on lake ice processes in the central QTP during the period 2019–13. The study lake generally froze up in late October or early November, and broke up in mid or late April, with a maximum ice thickness of 50–70 cm. The mass balances at both ice surface and bottom were measured continuously. Significant ice surface sublimation/ablation was detected and accounted for up to 40% of the whole ice thickness over the ice season. A simple heat-transfer model was developed for the surface ice loss. The calculated values were in good agreement with the observations. They also indicated that atmospheric conditions, including low air humidity and prevailing strong winds, are the primary drivers of the ice surface sublimation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A thermokarst lake is an important indicator of changes in climate, which cause considerable thermal distribution to the surrounding permafrost. The imaging radar has demonstrated the capability to determine when and which lakes freeze or do not freeze. In this paper, the temporal variability of C-band backscattering of thermokarst lakes at Beiluhe test area, is located on the central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), were examined by 45 ENVISAT-ASAR imageries acquired in freeze up, ice duration and break-up stages. The SAR behaviour response for lake ice change are analysed with ASAR observation in experiments area. The results showed that the ice layer volume scattering and ice-water surface scattering were the two major scattering components in C-band VV polarization, which is also affected by the increase of bubble size, ice density and roughness of ice-water interface. According to this study, the timing of lake ice-on in fall and ice-off in spring for this geographic region can be identified in radar images by comparing radar backscatter from lake ice to its surrounding alpine meadow. When ice duration, the radar signature proved to be able to monitor the ice thickness over lake and deformation around the lake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ice cover on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau plays an important role in the environmental and ecological systems. We analyze the in situ measurements of ice growth and examine the thermal diffusivity of thermokarst lake ice in the Beiluhe basin. We evaluate numerically the change of thermal diffusivity of thermokarst lake ice with changing ice temperature using an optimal control model. In a higher ice temperature regime (-3 to 0°C), the thermal diffusivity of thermokarst lake ice decreases exponentially with increasing ice temperature, and approaches the thermal diffusivity value of fresh water near the freezing-point temperature. In a lower ice temperature regime (-15 to -3°C), the thermal diffusivity increases slowly with decreasing ice temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of satellite radar altimetry has long been extended to areas other than the deep-ocean primarily because of the advances in radar waveform retracking methodologies. However, the retracking algorithms are limited to a handful shapes of return echoes over assumed known surfaces, while numerous unknown waveforms exist due to the complexity of real-world land cover and other surfaces. Measurements over a surface with seasonal or ephemeral patterns could thus degrade in accuracy due to varying characteristics from the corresponding radar backscatters. In this study, we demonstrate that the Qinghai Lake, an alpine water body with distinct seasonal variation between water and ice causes inaccurate surface-height estimates when using Envisat radar altimetry and conventional retracking techniques. Following the characterization of the lake surface using EO-1 and Landsat multispectral analysis, we hypothesize that the overestimation of the lake level during winter and early spring is not from the snow accumulation; rather it is due to an error of the onboard retracker (ICE-1) which is unable to properly model the quasi-specular waveforms. Hence, we first build a classification algorithm to identify the anomalous waveforms, and then use an empirical retracking gate correction to mitigate the ice contamination. The accuracy of the 20% threshold retracker (TR) after applying suggested gate correction has a significant improvement with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 6 ± 7 cm and a correlation of 0.98 compared with the in situ gauge data. The improvement in accuracy is 54% better than the ICE-1 and 85% than the OCEAN retrackers, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]