Trends in evaporative water demands in the Tibetan Plateau and its implication for hydroclimatic change

The Tibetan Plateau functions as the Asian water tower. It is highly sensitive to climate change and is warming faster than low-lying areas. The snow-melt dynamics are being perturbed, precipitation and evaporation patterns are shifting, and permafrost is degrading. Climate change therefore threatens the basin water supply as well as agriculture, hydropower, and industry which depend on it. The scientific questions we emphasized here are: (i) How evaporative water demand (EWD) changes in space and time during the current decades across the Asian water tower? (ii) Which driver should be attributable for the change? (iii) How EWD change informs the potential alteration of surface water resources in the Asian water tower? The expected outcomes would improve our understanding of the hydroclimatic change in the Asian water tower as well as other high-water yielding mountainous regions worldwide.