Permafrost

Tibetan Plateau have shown that the giant prominence expert thermal effects on the atmosphere,
thus greatly influencing atmospheric circulations over China, Asia and even the global. Due to
its topographic character, the plateau surface absorbs a large amount of solar radiation energy
and undergoes dramatic seasonal changes of surface heat and water fluxes. The lack of
quantitative understanding of interactions between the land surface and atmosphere makes it
difficult to understand the complete energy and water cycles over the Tibetan Plateau and their
effects on the Asian Monsoon system by numerical models. Therefore, the study on energy
exchange and water cycle are regarded as the main task in the GEWEX (Global Energy and
Water cycle Experiment) Asian Monsoon Experiment on the Tibetan Plateau (GAME/Tibet,
1996-2000) and CEOP (Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period) Asia-Australia Monsoon
Project (CAMP) on the Tibetan Plateau (CAMP/Tibet, 2001-2005). The intensive observation
and long-term observation of the GAME/Tibet and the CAMP/Tibet have been done
successfully in the past 8 years. A large amount of data has been collected, which is the best
data set so far for the study of land surface heat flux and water cycle over the Tibetan Plateau.
Firstly, the field experiments and some results on the local land surface fluxes partitioning
(“imbalance”, diurnal variation, inter-monthly variation, inter-yearly variation and vertical
variation etc) will be presented.
The study on the regional distribution of land surface heat fluxes is of paramount
importance over heterogeneous landscape of the Tibetan Plateau and it is also one of the main
scientific objectives of GAME/Tibet and CAMP/Tibet. Therefore, the derived regional
distribution and seasonal variation of surface variables (surface reflectance and surface
temperature), vegetation variables (NDVI, MSAVI, vegetation coverage and LAI) and surface
heat fluxes (net radiation flux, soil heat flux, sensible and latent heat flux) are also presented by
combining 5 Landsat-7 ETM images with field observations.
In order to upscale the land surface heat fluxes to the whole Tibetan Plateau area, the
Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is
establishing a Monitoring and Research Platform (MORP) for land surface and atmospheric
processes on the Tibetan Plateau. The establishing and monitoring plan of long-term scale (5-10
years) of the MORP and three new comprehensive observation and study stations
(Mt.Qomolangma, Nam Cuo and Linzhi) will also be introduced here.
206
Modelling and Mapping of Mountain Permafrost Occurrence and
Distribution in Ulaanbaatar area using GIS and Remote Sensing
Ya.Jambaljav, A.Dashtseren, D.Battogtokh
(Institute of Geography, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar – 210620, MONGOLIA)
e-mail: jambaljav@hotmail.com
Abstract: Mongolia is situated in the southern boundary of Eurasian permafrost region in
which permafrost distribution is mosaic-lake, being strongly affected not only by landscape
conditions but by global climate (1).