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The Yarlung Zangbo River (YZR) is the largest river system in the Tibetan Plateau, and its basin is one of the centers of human economic activity in Tibet. Large uncertainties exist in several previous climate change studies in this basin because of limited climate observations. In this paper, we used a meteorological drought index (Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, SPEI) and a newly-released gridded climate forcing dataset based on high-quality climate station data to re-evaluate climate change in the YZR Basin during the period of 1961-2014. Results showed that precipitation experienced a statistically insignificant increasing trend at a rate of 6.32 mm/10 years, and its annual mean was 512.40 mm. The basin was sensitive to climate change in terms of the air temperature that significantly increased at the rate of 0.32 °C/10 years. This warming rate was obviously larger than that in many other regions. Analysis of SPEI showed that the basin had no obvious statistical trends in the number of dry/wet episodes, but the severity of dry episode aggravated in terms of duration and magnitude. This study provides a reliable analysis of climate change in the YZR Basin, and suggests this large Tibetan river basin is sensitive to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Aeolian sandy land in the Yarlung Zangbo River basin has attracted the attention of many researchers. However, its dynamics as well as its relevance to various factors has rarely been reported with integrated studies. In this paper, spatio-temporal dynamics of the aeolian sandy land in the basin was studied by interpreting Landsat images acquired from 1975, 1990, 2000, and 2008 with the help of geographic information system (GIS) technology. Spatially, the results showed a decreasing trend from west to east, which is from the Maquanhe wide valley in the headwater area to the middle and lower reaches of the river basin. Temporally, aeolian sandy lands in the basin showed a slow increasing trend, with an increase of 10.5% during the 1975–2008 period, spreading most quickly during the period of 1990–1999. The factors related to dynamics of aeolian sandy land were analyzed from the perspectives of two driving factors, climate changes and human activities. The climate-dominated natural factors are the internal driving forces for the development of aeolian sandy lands, and the human factors are the external driving forces responsible for the increase of the aeolian sandy land area. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]