TIBETAN OBSERVATION AND RESEARCH PLATFORM: Atmosphere–Land Interaction over a Heterogeneous Landscape

The Tibetan Plateau, with the most prominent and complicated terrain on the globe and an elevation of more than 4,000 m, on average, above sea level, is very important in Asian monsoon circulation and global climate change. The lack of quantitative understanding of interactions between the land surface and atmosphere makes it difficult to model the complete energy and water cycles over the Tibetan Plateau and their effects on global climate change. Therefore, the number of atmosphere–land interaction studies over the Tibetan Plateau has increased in recent years. But experiments have been limited by observational parameters, and most investigations have only been done in summer and at a few locations. With support from various agencies in the People's Republic of China, a Tibetan Observation and Research Platform (TORP) is now focusing on land–surface processes and the environment over the plateau, with an emphasis on atmosphere–land interaction. We show the background and the progress of TORPs long-term monitoring plan (5–10 years), as well as present the TORP data policy and the uses of TORP data.