Advances in Earth Science ›› 2014, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (6): 674-682. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2014.06.0674

Special Issue: 青藏高原研究——青藏科考虚拟专刊

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Hydrological modelling over the Tibetan Plateau: Current status and Perspective

Wang Lei, Li Xiuping, Zhou Jing, Liu Wenbin, Yang Kun   

  1. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
  • Online:2014-06-10 Published:2014-06-10

Wang Lei, Li Xiuping, Zhou Jing, Liu Wenbin, Yang Kun. Hydrological modelling over the Tibetan Plateau: Current status and Perspective[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2014, 29(6): 674-682.

This paper describes the current status and perspective for the hydrological modelling over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Hydrological models, as primary tools to study hydrological processes, can provide theoretical and decision support for water resources management as well as disaster prevention and mitigation in river basins. As is known, the first-generation hydrological models are “lumped”, and the second-generation hydrological models are “distributed”. However, most of the above models mainly describe the “precipitation-to runoff” water transport processes (“hydrosphere”) without carefully addressing the special role of vegetation in the water and energy exchanges in the landatmosphere interactions (“biosphere-atmosphere”). Over the past decade, in the context of climate change, with the vibrant developments of atmospheric science and ecology, distributed hydrological models began to describe the biosphereatmosphere interactions by improving the water and energy cycle formulations between the land and atmosphere, as well as enhancing the descriptions of physiological processes of vegetation. Up to now, a comprehensive description of hydrosphere-biosphere-atmosphere interactions in river basins has been realized by the hydrological community. However, regarding TP with a large portion of cryosphere land cover, the detailed cryospheric processes are of essence to be further considered in the multi-sphere hydrological modeling over TP. This will largely contribute to studies of the interaction mechanism among the cryosphere and other spheres (hydrosphere /biosphere /atmosphere), and thus improve the predictive ability of the region’s water resources and water-related disasters.

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