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

合作研究：青藏高原的增长和东亚气候：了解水文循环的线索

• 批准号: 1212024
• 负责人: Zhengyu Liu
• 金额: $ 33.44万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1212024&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Growth; Tibetan; Plateau

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.

五十年来，青藏高原一直被认为是扰乱大气环流的最大地形特征。 它是了解形成高地形的地球动力学过程的理想现场实验室。 因此，高原的增长应该改变了大气环流，因此不仅在东亚区域气候上，而且也在全球气候上写下了不断变化的古气候特征。 尽管最近进行了许多研究，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，对时间和方式进行多学科研究。该项目的主要目标之一是量化西藏因地壳增厚、逆冲断层和褶皱而增长的程度，通过地壳内的流动重新分配那里的物质，或者通过用较热的物质替换冷的地幔岩石圈（所有这些都处于均衡状态）。这种量化将在理解高原是如何形成以及大陆岩石圈如何变形等地球动力学前沿主题方面迈出一大步。确定西藏的增长方式需要使用基本的现场方法和现代实验室技术来确定地壳缩短和增厚的发生时间，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输送同位素，还需要了解不断变化的高地地形如何影响过去的地表温度。