Collaborative Research: Growth of the Tibetan Plateau and Eastern Asia Climate: Clues to Understanding the Hydrological Cycle

50年来，青藏高原一直被认为是扰动大气环流的最大地形特征。 它是一个理想的野外实验室，可以用来了解形成高地的地球动力学过程。 因此，高原的生长应该改变了大气环流，因此不仅在东亚区域气候上，而且在全球气候上写下了不断演变的古气候特征。 尽管最近有许多研究，我们仍然不知道青藏高原何时达到目前的规模，以及它如何扰乱大气环流。 该项目汇集了地球动力学家、大气科学家和古气候学家，对何时和如何进行多学科研究。该项目的主要目标之一是量化西藏通过地壳增厚、逆冲断层和褶皱、地壳内流动重新分配物质而增长的程度，或由较热的物质替换较冷的地幔岩石圈（均处于均衡平衡状态）。这样的量化将使我们在理解高原是如何形成的以及大陆岩石圈如何变形方面迈出一大步，这些都是地球动力学的前沿课题。要确定西藏是如何发展的，需要使用基本的野外方法和现代实验室技术，确定地壳缩短和增厚发生的时间，并使用新的同位素工具量化古海拔。然而，应用这种古高度测量技术不仅需要了解大气如何传输同位素，还需要了解过去不断变化的高地形如何影响地表温度。

For fifty years, the Tibetan Plateau has been recognized as the largest topographic feature that perturbs atmospheric circulation. It serves as an ideal field laboratory for understanding the geodynamic processes that build high terrain. Accordingly, the growth of the plateau should have altered atmospheric circulation and therefore written an evolving paleoclimatic signature not only on eastern Asian regional climates, but on global climate as well. Despite many recent studies, we still do not know precisely when the Tibetan Plateau reached its current dimensions and how it perturbs atmospheric circulation. This project brings together geodynamicists, atmospheric scientists, and paleoclimatologists in a multidisciplinary study of the when and the how.One of the major goals of the project is to quantify the extent to which Tibet has grown by crustal thickening, by thrust faulting and folding, by flow within the crust that redistributes material there, or by replacement of cold mantle lithosphere with hotter material (all in a state of isostatic equilibrium). Such quantification will take big steps toward the understanding of how high plateaus are built and how continental lithosphere deforms, topics at the forefront of geodynamics. Determining how Tibet has grown will require determining when crustal shortening and thickening occurred, using basic field methods and modern laboratory techniques, and quantifying paleoaltitudes with new isotopic tools. Applying such paleoaltimetric techniques, however, requires an understanding not only of how the atmosphere transports isotopes, but how the evolving high terrain affected surface temperatures at times in the past.