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干扰大气环流的最大地形特征。它是一个理想的野外实验室，用于理解构建高地形的地球动力学过程。因此，高原的生长应该改变了大气环流，从而不仅在东亚区域气候上，而且在全球气候上写下了一个不断演变的古气候特征。尽管最近进行了许多研究，但我们仍然不清楚青藏高原何时达到目前的规模，以及它是如何扰乱大气环流的。这个项目将地球动力学家、大气科学家和古气候学家聚集在一起，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在多大程度上通过地壳增厚、逆冲断层和褶皱、地壳内部流动重新分配物质，或用更热的物质取代冷的地幔岩石圈（所有这些都处于均衡平衡状态）而增长。这样的量化将在理解高原是如何形成的以及大陆岩石圈是如何变形的方面迈出一大步，这些都是地球动力学的前沿课题。要确定西藏是如何形成的，需要确定地壳缩短和增厚的时间，使用基本的野外方法和现代实验室技术，并使用新的同位素工具来量化古海拔。然而，要应用这种古测高技术，不仅需要了解大气是如何输送同位素的，还需要了解不断演变的高地是如何影响过去某些时候的地表温度的。

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.