Four Centuries of Climatic Variation across the Tibetan Plateau from Ice- Core Accumulation and 80 Records

The Tibetan Plateau is an important component of the South Asian Monsoon system, but there are relatively few long, high-resolution records of precipitation and temperature variability from the Plateau itself. Only recently has it been recognized that the distribution and the chemistry of the precipitation across this large, elevated landmass is not unifonn (AraguasAraguas et al. , 1999; Tian et al. , 2001; Liu and Lin., 2001). These studies have been based on data from precipitation and river water sample collection and analysis, and on patterns of meteorological and reanalysis data. Here, longer, high-resolution records of spatial and temporal variations of temperature and precipitation across the Tibetan Plateau since 1600 A.D. are presented from two ice cores. These ice-core sites are on the southern and northeastern edges of the Tibetan Plateau, thus providing wide spatial coverage (Figure 1).