Lake area and volume variation in the endorheic basin of the Tibetan Plateau from 1989 to 2019

Abstract. The Tibetan Plateau, known as "the third pole of the Earth", is a region susceptible to climate change. With little human disturbance, lake storage changes serve as a unique indicator of climate change, but comprehensive lake storage data are rare in the region, especially for the lakes with an area less than 10 km2 which are the most sensitive to environmental changes. In this paper, we completed a census of annual lake volume change for 976 lakes larger than 1 km2 in the endorheic basin of the Tibetan Plateau (EBTP) during 1989–2019 using Landsat imagery and digital terrain models. Validation and comparison with several existing studies indicate that our data are more reliable. Lake volume in the EBTP exhibited a net increase of 193.45 km3 during the time period with an increasing rate of 6.45 km3 year−1. In general, the larger the lake area, the greater the lake volume change, though there are some exceptions. Lakes with an area less than 10 km2 have more severe volume change whether decreasing or increasing. This research complements existing lake studies by providing a comprehensive and long-term lake volume change data for the region. The dataset is available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5543615, Wang et al., 2021).