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The Tibetan Plateau and its surroundings, also known as the Third Pole, play an important role in the global and regional climate and hydrological cycle. Carbonaceous aerosols (CAs), including black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC), can directly or indirectly absorb and scatter solar radiation and change the energy balance on the Earth. CAs, along with the other atmospheric pollutants (e.g., mercury), can be frequently transported over long distances into the inland Tibetan Plateau. During the last decades, a coordinated monitoring network and research program named "Atmospheric Pollution and Cryospheric Changes" (APCC) has been gradually set up and continuously operated within the Third Pole regions to investigate the linkage between atmospheric pollutants and cryospheric changes. This paper presents a systematic dataset of BC, OC, water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC), and water-insoluble organic carbon (WIOC) from aerosols (20 stations), glaciers (17 glaciers, including samples from surface snow and ice, snow pits, and 2 ice cores), snow cover (2 stations continuously observed and 138 locations surveyed once), precipitation (6 stations), and lake sediment cores (7 lakes) collected across the Third Pole, based on the APCC program. These data were created based on online (in situ) and laboratory measurements. High-resolution (daily scale) atmospheric-equivalent BC concentrations were obtained by using an Aethalometer (AE-33) in the Mt. Everest (Qomolangma) region, which can provide new insight into the mechanism of BC transportation over the Himalayas. Spatial distributions of BC, OC, WSOC, and WIOC from aerosols, glaciers, snow cover, and precipitation indicated different features among the different regions of the Third Pole, which were mostly influenced by emission sources, transport pathways, and deposition processes. Historical records of BC from ice cores and lake sediment cores revealed the strength of the impacts of human activity since the Industrial Revolution. BC isotopes from glaciers and aerosols identified the relative contributions of biomass and fossil fuel combustion to BC deposition on the Third Pole. Mass absorption cross sections of BC and WSOC from aerosol, glaciers, snow cover, and precipitation samples were also provided. This updated dataset is released to the scientific communities focusing on atmospheric science, cryospheric science, hydrology, climatology, and environmental science. The related datasets are presented in the form of excel files. BC and OC datasets over the Third Pole are available to download from the National Cryosphere Desert Data Center (10.12072/ncdc.NIEER.db0114.2021; Kang and Zhang, 2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) and its surroundings, known as the Third Pole, play an important role in the regional and global climate and hydrological cycle. Carbonaceous aerosols (CAs), including black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC), can directly/indirectly absorb and scatter solar radiation, and change the energy balance on Earth. CAs, along with other atmospheric pollutants (e.g., mercury), can frequently be transported over long distances into the inland TP. During the last decade, a coordinated monitoring network and research program on Atmospheric Pollution and Cryospheric Change (APCC) has been gradually setup and continuously operated within the Third Pole regions to investigate the linkage between atmospheric pollutants and cryospheric change. This paper presents a systematic dataset of BC, OC, water soluble organic carbon (WSOC), and water insoluble organic carbon (WIOC) from aerosols (19 stations), glaciers (17 glaciers, including samples from surface snow/ice, snowpit, and two ice cores), snow cover (2 stations continuous observed, and 138 sites surveyed), precipitation (6 stations), and lake sediment cores (7 lakes) collected across the TP and its surroundings, as the first dataset released from this APCC program. These data were created based on online (in-situ) and laboratory measurements. High-resolution (daily scale) atmospheric equivalent BC (eBC) concentrations were obtained by using an aethalometer (AE-33) in the Mt. Everest (Qomolangma) region, which can provide a new insight into the mechanism of BC transportation over the Himalayas. Spatial distributions of BC, OC, WSOC and WIOC from aerosols, glaciers, snow cover, and precipitation indicated different features among the different regions of the TP, which were mostly influenced by emission sources, transport, and deposition processes. Several hundred years of refractory BC (rBC) records from ice cores and BC from lake sediment cores revealed the strength of human activities since the industrial revolution. BC isotopes from glaciers and aerosols identified the relative contributions of biomass and fossil fuel combustion to BC deposition on the Himalayas and TP. Mass absorption cross section of BC and WSOC from aerosol, glaciers, snow cover, and precipitation samples were also provided. This updated dataset is released to the scientific communities focusing on atmospheric science, cryospheric science, hydrology, climatology and environmental science. The related datasets are presented in the form of excel files. These files are available to download from the State Key Laboratory of Cryosphere Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences at Lanzhou https://doi.org/10.12072/ncdc.NIEER.db0114.2021, Kang and Zhang, 2021). In the future, datasets of mercury, heavy metals, and POPs will be reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has already impacted ecosystems and species and substantial impacts of climate change in the future are expected. Species distribution modeling is widely used to map the current potential distribution of species as well as to model the impact of future climate change on distribution of species. Mapping current distribution is useful for conservation planning and understanding the change in distribution impacted by climate change is important for mitigation of future biodiversity losses. However, the current distribution of Chinese caterpillar fungus, a flagship species of the Himalaya with very high economic value, is unknown. Nor do we know the potential changes in suitable habitat of Chinese caterpillar fungus caused by future climate change. We used MaxEnt modeling to predict current distribution and changes in the future distributions of Chinese caterpillar fungus in three future climate change trajectories based on representative concentration pathways (RCPs: RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 6.0) in three different time periods (2030, 2050, and 2070) using species occurrence points, bioclimatic variables, and altitude. About 6.02% (8,989 km2) area of the Nepal Himalaya is suitable for Chinese caterpillar fungus habitat. Our model showed that across all future climate change trajectories over three different time periods, the area of predicted suitable habitat of Chinese caterpillar fungus would expand, with 0.11–4.87% expansion over current suitable habitat. Depending upon the representative concentration pathways, we observed both increase and decrease in average elevation of the suitable habitat range of the species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]