They are deciphering the "Qinghai-Tibet Code"

As the most unique geological, geographical, resource and ecological unit on earth, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is called a "natural laboratory" by the scientific community. Under the ice here are traces of climate and environmental changes over the past tens of millions of years, and the bottom of the lake records the changes of the world...

The glacier was covered in white, and the red clothes of the scientific expedition team members were particularly eye-catching. A group of more than a dozen people staggered and gasped as they returned to the scientific expedition camp at an altitude of 5,600 meters. In mid-November, the scientific expedition team led by Academician Yao Tandong, the chief captain of the second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition, completed another survey mission in the No. 1 Kuoqionggangri Glacier area of ​​the Lhasa River. The plateau is gradually entering a severe winter, and scientific expedition work will shift from a large number of field trips to mainly laboratory work. my country's second comprehensive scientific survey and research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is about to enter its fifth year.

The scientific expedition team is climbing up the glacier

Known as the "Roof of the World", "Asian Water Tower" and "Third Pole of the Earth", the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an important ecological security barrier and strategic resource reserve base in my country, and is also the source of many major rivers in Asia. At the same time, as the most unique geological-geographical-resource-ecological unit on the earth, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is called a "natural laboratory" by the scientific community. Under the ice here are traces of climate and environmental changes over millions of years, and the bottom of the lake records the changes of the world...

In order to explore the mysteries of the earth hidden in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, my country launched the second comprehensive scientific investigation and research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in 2017 after a lapse of nearly 50 years. Ten major tasks, more than 260 units, more than 7,000 scientific researchers, more than 1,500 days and nights... The scientific expedition team members climbed ice and snow on the mountains, hiked in the river valleys, and braved the wind and waves in the lakes.

They are explorers at the "Third Pole", but they have no time to appreciate the scenery.

They are deciphering the "Qinghai-Tibet Code" that has been buried for tens of millions of years.

1

"Protect the last pure land in the world"

On August 19, 2017, the second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition was officially launched in Lhasa, led by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. At the launching ceremony, a special letter excited all the researchers present - General Secretary Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter, asking the expedition team to focus on water, ecology, and human activities, and strive to solve problems in the resource and environmental carrying capacity, disaster risks, and green development paths of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. He also proposed to "protect the last piece of pure land in the world."

my country has always attached great importance to the research work on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. At the National Science and Technology Work Conference chaired by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971, an eight-year science and technology development plan for basic research (1972-1980) was formulated, and comprehensive scientific investigation and research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was one of the five core contents; in 1980, Deng Xiaoping and other party and state leaders met with Chinese and foreign scientists attending the first International Scientific Symposium on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; since 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping has made many important instructions on the ecological environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: "Protecting the ecology of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the greatest contribution to the survival and development of the Chinese nation" and "The ecology of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is very fragile, and the dilemma between development and protection, construction and food always exists. On this issue, we must take a long-term view and insist on ecological protection first."

Scientific expedition team members conduct geological survey

In the 1970s, my country launched the first large-scale Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition, which covered 2.6 million square kilometers and achieved remarkable results. Liu Dongsheng, Ye Duzheng, Wu Zhengyi and other participants in the expedition were awarded the highest national science and technology award, and more than 40 members of the expedition were elected as academicians.

The reason why the research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has attracted so much attention is not only because of its unique geological features and resources, but also because of its huge impact on the surrounding climate and even the global environment and resources.

Yao Tandong compared the two Qinghai-Tibet expeditions: the first was for discovery, and the second was for observing changes. In recent decades, the speed of change has been so fast that researchers could not have anticipated it.

Yao Tandong has been walking on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for nearly half a century, from the first time he went out into the wild as a student to now serving as the chief leader of the scientific expedition. He clearly feels that the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is getting warmer, wetter, and greener, with more precipitation, better vegetation, and not so cold. "In the past 60 years, we have experienced unprecedented climate warming in human history. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, as the 'third pole' of the earth, is one of the most sensitive regions to climate change in the world, with a warming rate that is more than twice the global average warming rate during the same period."

With global warming, the climate on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is becoming more pleasant. Isn't that a good thing? But Yao Tandong sees risks.

really.

In July 2016, an ice avalanche occurred at Glacier No. 53 in the Aru Co Lake area of ​​Dongru Township, Ritu County, Ali Prefecture, Tibet. "It almost flew down, and the ice body moved 5.7 kilometers downward in 4 minutes, with a speed of about 90 kilometers per hour before forming an ice avalanche fan." Yao Tandong told Science and Technology Daily that the broken ice rushed into Aru Co and set off a huge "lake tsunami" 10 meters high, leaving clear scouring marks on the opposite bank of the lake, the farthest reaching 250 meters from the shore.

Two months later, Glacier 50 to the south of Glacier 53 also collapsed. Such an ice avalanche in the Ngari region is unheard of in recorded history. Yao Tandong explained that unlike the periodic movement of glaciers in southeastern Tibet, the glaciers in the Ngari region are extremely stable, and ice avalanches are directly related to climate warming. Remote sensing data showed that since 2011, the two glaciers that experienced ice avalanches have experienced a phenomenon of rapid migration of the upper ice body to the lower part, which shows that the occurrence of ice avalanches has a certain accumulation process. Yao Tandong judged that this kind of ice avalanche is likely to continue to occur, and he regarded this kind of ice avalanche as a new type of glacial disaster.

Scientific expedition team members are investigating the glacier

Climate warming has caused the dysfunction of the "Asian Water Tower" and brought about a series of ecological disasters, of which ice avalanches are just the tip of the iceberg. In 2018, ice debris blocked the Sedongpu Valley near Gala Village in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River; in 1981 and 2016, the Zhangzangbu Glacial Lake in Nyalam County, Tibet, burst, causing major impacts in Nepal...

In the short term, floods will intensify because there will be more water. However, according to researchers’ predictions, by the middle of this century, the supply of glaciers to river runoff will gradually decrease after reaching its maximum value. In the long term, there will be a shortage of water resources. Once the glacier meltwater runs out, the oasis in the downstream arid areas will be unsustainable, and the climate, environment, vegetation, resources, and people’s production and life will all change.

"The 'Asian Water Tower' is the life tower of the Asian people." Yao Tandong said that with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as the core, it radiates in different directions, east, west, south and north, covering the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Pamir, Hindu Kush, Iranian Plateau, Caucasus, Carpathian and other mountain ranges, with an area of ​​about 20 million square kilometers, which can be called the pan-"third pole" region. This region is related to the survival and development of more than 2 billion people in the world.

As General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during his inspection tour in Tibet, protecting Tibet's ecological environment will benefit future generations and the whole world.

The second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition focuses on changes in key processes such as glaciers, snow, permafrost, lakes and rivers, and explores cutting-edge issues in Earth system science involving multi-sphere interactions, which is related to the people's livelihood and well-being in the entire pan-"Third Pole" region.

2

Daily life of an explorer at the "Third Pole"

The second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition set up 10 major tasks, including the changes and impacts of the "Asian Water Tower", plateau growth and evolution, biodiversity protection and utilization, human activities and living environment safety, and many other topics under each task. What have more than 7,000 researchers been doing in the past five years?

Scientific expedition team members conduct ecological survey

In early November, at the Dasuopu Glacier of Shishapangma Peak on the northern slope of the Himalayas, as the last batch of ice core samples were transported down by helicopter, Xu Baiqing, a researcher at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, completed the most important field mission of the year.

Ice cores are cylindrical ice samples drilled from the top of a glacier. They are the treasures of glacier researchers. In the accumulation area at the top of the glacier, the ice layer is formed more and more anciently as you go down. Layer by layer, like tree rings, can record information about changes in the earth's environment. Xu Baiqing is the leader of the Glacier and Environmental Change Expedition Team in the Second Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition. His mission is to reveal the characteristics of glacier changes and climate change in this area through ice cores from different glaciers.

The ice cores are hard to come by. Xu Baiqing told reporters that the ice cores need to be worked in a tent. But when the sun shines during the day, the temperature in the tent can reach more than 10 degrees, and the ice cores will melt, so they can only be worked at night. The light on the glacier is particularly strong, and the tent cannot completely block the light. Working at night, it is difficult to catch up on sleep during the day. On average, they can only sleep for two or three hours a day.

There are tens of thousands of glaciers and thousands of lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which are like "Pearls of the Plateau". Zhu Liping, a researcher at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the leader of the Second Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition to Lakes and Hydrology and Meteorology, and is "doing a physical examination" on these "Pearls of the Plateau", big and small.

"Remote sensing technology can tell us how big the lake is, but we don't know how deep the lake is, or whether the water is fresh or salty. So we need to measure these lakes, and then get data on water storage and water quality; and through further research, we can predict the future changes of these lakes." Zhu Liping said that he also needs to drill the lake - take a rubber boat to the center of the lake, climb onto an operating platform built with buoys or floating boxes, which is about a dozen square meters in size and can carry 3 to 5 tons, put the piston sampler into the water, penetrate it into the mud at the bottom of the lake, and get a rock column. Climate change information can be read from the lake bottom sediments in this core.

Deng Tao, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, walks through ancient sites looking for fossil evidence to restore the living scenes of animals and humans in ancient times.

Yang Yongping, a researcher at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, travels between forests and grasslands to observe flowers and plants, and to establish archives for rare plants on the plateau...

In the nearly five years since the scientific expedition was launched, researchers from more than 260 units have switched back and forth between the field and the laboratory, and have often spent the Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day and even the Spring Festival in tents in the wild.

The expedition team estimated the water storage capacity of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, including glacier water storage, lake water storage, and major river runoff, totaling more than 9 trillion cubic meters. It also predicted that by the end of the 21st century, if global warming is controlled within 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau will warm up by 2.1 degrees Celsius and the glaciers will melt by one-third.

Scientific expedition team members collect lake water samples

The expedition team found that the treeline in the Hengduan Mountains-Qilian Mountains forest distribution area has risen by an average of 29 meters in the past 100 years, with the maximum rise of 80 meters. Pu Shilong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Peking University, said that the rise of the alpine treeline has increased forest biomass, but has compressed the living space of alpine shrubs and meadows, increasing the risk of disappearance of high-altitude endemic species. At the same time, the Tibetan people's main food, highland barley, has also been affected by the warming of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Since 2000, the yield of highland barley per hectare has decreased by 0.2 tons for every 1°C increase in temperature.

The scientific expedition team obtained a series of evidence about the long-term activities of the Denisovans, a human population living in the last Ice Age, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from the soil sediments of the Baishiya Karst Cave on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, pushing the earliest history of prehistoric human activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau back to 190,000 years ago.

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In the past five years, the expedition team has also done a lot of basic work, using tethered airships, drones, underwater robots, helicopters, etc. to initially build an Earth system expedition platform for the integrated protection and systematic management of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands and sand ice. "This is our most advanced expedition platform at present. The changes in all these spheres, including the atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, ecosphere, lithosphere and human sphere, can be fully recorded at the same time through this platform," said Yao Tandong.

3

Inheriting the "Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Spirit"

Protecting this pure land is not an easy task. It should even be said that it is too difficult.

Helicopter transportation has only been used in the past two years on the Shishapangmadasuopu Glacier and the Animachen Weigel Dangxiong Glacier. Previously, ice core drilling relied entirely on human transportation. Xu Baiqing said that they usually had to travel back and forth between the forward camp at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters and the ice core drilling camp at an altitude of more than 7,000 meters to deliver supplies and bring down ice cores.

The quiet plateau lakes are not as calm as imagined. Zhu Liping said that when drilling in lakes, if there are big waves, people can't stand on the working platform. When encountering the biggest wind and waves, the boat was "cutting" the waves at a 45-degree angle on the return trip. "Students kept scooping water out with basins at the bow, and I was driving the boat at the stern. I was most afraid that the engine would stall. The oil must be added just right. Too much oil will 'suffocate', and insufficient oil will stall." When they returned to the camp on the shore, their jackets, fleece jackets, autumn johns and other clothes inside and outside were all wet, as if they had just been pulled out of the water.

Scientific expedition team members are sampling the lake

In response to the ice avalanche blocking the river in Sedongpugou near Gala Village in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River in 2018, Yang Wei, a researcher at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues hiked into the primeval forest of the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon in October 2019, installed a 10-meter-high monitoring tower at the site of the river blocking incident, and lived in the wild for more than ten days. "The southeastern region of Tibet is very humid and there are many insects. When sleeping at night, you have to cover the tent with a layer of plastic sheet, but you are still bitten by ticks all the time." Yang Wei said that ticks, like leeches, drill into the flesh, and you have to use a cigarette butt to burn it to pull the whole tick out, otherwise it will be difficult to deal with the head left in the flesh.

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Although the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition in the new era is supported by a series of new scientific and technological equipment, objective difficulties such as altitude sickness, extreme outdoor environment, and various dangers must be overcome by people, and manpower is always irreplaceable when entering glaciers, lakes, and forests to conduct surveys. The most annoying thing is that the instruments also have "altitude sickness". Affected by the special climate environment of the plateau, such as air pressure, humidity, and temperature difference, many instruments will fail on the plateau. Sometimes, the data collected by the scientific expedition team with great effort is gone.

Every researcher who has done research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau interviewed by the reporter has a common temperament: optimistic, open-minded, love the wild, and can endure hardships. They are down-to-earth, brave to explore, work together to overcome difficulties, and climb to the top. This is the Qinghai-Tibet scientific spirit created by the older generation of scientists walking on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and passed on from generation to generation.

Scientific expedition team members collect rock samples

At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was still blank. At that time, only a few foreign explorers and missionaries collected some sporadic data on the scientific research of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Since then, the research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has become a scientific research task at the national strategic level in my country. Scientific investigation work has also been carried out since the 1950s, and some special scientific investigations have been carried out on the natural conditions, geology, agriculture and animal husbandry of local areas.

In 1973, the first Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition was launched, hosted by Sun Honglie, a famous geographer and land resource scientist. In the years of poor basic conditions and scarcity of materials, more than 400 people resolutely devoted themselves to the scientific expedition, eating compressed biscuits and drinking cold water from kettles for lunch; the best place to stay was the military depot or local transport station, where they lived in double-decker bunk beds; there were countless times when there was no road ahead and they pushed carts into the river countless times... In four years, from the Himalayas to the uninhabited areas in northern Tibet, from the Hengduan Mountains to the Ali Plateau, the scientific expedition team members almost measured the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with their feet.

Image source: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences website

This hard-working national expedition team pioneered great scientific discoveries on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and laid a solid foundation for future research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This foundation is not only the scientific research itself, but also includes the working style and mental outlook.

4

China through research on the “third pole”

The mystery of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was once described by Swedish explorer Sven Hedin in his book "Travels in the Heart of Asia" as follows: "Until January 1907, we knew as little about this part of the planet (the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau) as we did about the back of the moon." Today, more than 100 years later, thanks to the exploration of scientists and the measurement of instruments and equipment, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is gradually unveiling its mysterious veil.

The scientific expedition team sorted out the scientific research materials overnight

From being poor and unable to organize large-scale scientific expeditions at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, to organizing the second large-scale Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition with thousands of people and expected to last for 10 years. Today, China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau research has stepped onto the world stage and opened its arms to join hands with scientific research institutions around the world.

After the reform and opening up, a large number of researchers who benefited from various Sino-foreign joint training programs brought new research ideas and methods to various research fields of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Facing the frontier areas of international research, my country's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau research began to shift from qualitative research to a combination of quantitative and qualitative research, from static research to dynamic research, process and mechanism research, from a single discipline to comprehensive integration, and from regional research to global environmental change research.

As Chinese researchers have gained a deeper understanding of the environmental changes in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its importance in the global ecological environment, in 2009, Yao Tandong, together with domestic and foreign "Third Pole" research scientists, jointly launched the "Third Pole Environment" international program, which is committed to promoting multi-sphere research on the "Third Pole" Earth system and serving regional sustainable development.

Professor Lonnie Thompson of the Byrd Polar Research Center in the United States is one of the co-chairs of the "Third Pole Environment". This "good friend" of the "Third Pole" went to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for field surveys almost every year before the epidemic, even though he was over 70 years old and had undergone heart bypass surgery. The other two co-chairs are Professor Folke Mosbrugger, director of the German National Museum of Natural History and paleontologist, and Yao Tandong.

The Third Pole Environment holds a regular meeting every year, and it is agreed that it will be held in Nepal, India, the United States, and Germany in the future, with each country taking turns to host it. However, the annual meeting in 2011 was held in Iceland. It turned out that the President of Iceland heard about this plan and wanted to combine it with Arctic research, so he specially invited it.

This cross-national, cross-regional and cross-disciplinary joint research approach introduces the models and methods that European and American researchers are good at into the "Third Pole" region, while sharing more first-hand field data to promote the overall development of the research field.

The expedition team members carry the drilled ice core samples down the mountain

In recent years, the number of research papers and citation rates of Chinese scientists on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have consistently ranked first in the world. In the world's polar science circle, the "Third Pole" research led by Chinese scientists has attracted much attention as a rising force.

The world is concerned about climate change, and the scientific community is looking forward to the voice from the "third pole". Next, the second Qinghai-Tibet expedition will continue to focus on "change" and answer a series of questions: How to integrate various observations and models to predict the future fate of the Asian water tower under climate warming? What impact will the environmental changes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have on the surrounding areas, and how to deal with it? How does the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau respond to global changes? What is the relationship between the ecological evolution of the plateau and human activities...

The National Key Laboratory of Earth System Science on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition data sharing platform, and the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition Earth system multi-sphere comprehensive observation platform are also under construction.

Researchers will continue to explore this mysterious land and strive to unravel the secrets that have been hidden here for tens of millions of years.

Written by: Yang Xue, a reporter from Science and Technology Daily

Editor: Liu Li

Produced by Science and Technology Daily and Deep Eye Studio

Source: All pictures in the article, except those noted, are from the Second Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition Office

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