Promote scientific data sharing for the world’s Third Pole

 The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the world’s Third Pole, holds immense significance in the global context, influencing climate patterns, water resources, and biodiversity across Asia and even the globe. Scientific data related to the Tibetan Plateau is crucial for understanding of the complex interactions among its lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and anthroposphere. Additionally, sharing scientific data facilitates collaborative research efforts, fostering a comprehensive approach to addressing challenges such as water resource management, natural disasters, and the sustainable development of the Tibetan Plateau. By promoting and sharing scientific data of the Third Pole, the international scientific community can contribute to the understand and preservation of this vital region and its far-reaching implications for the Earth system.

The National Tibetan Plateau/Third Pole Environment Data Center (TPDC, https://data.tpdc.ac.cn) is one of the first 20 national data centers endorsed by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China in 2019. The TPDC is dedicated to consolidating and integrating extensive data resources of the Tibetan Plateau. The data center is featured by the most complete scientific data for the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding regions, and is hosting more than 6,300 datasets collected from diverse disciplines, covering terrestrial surface, human-nature relationship, atmosphere, solid Earth, cryosphere, remote sensing, paleoenvironment, and others. The TPDC provides a cloud-based platform with integrated online data acquisition, quality control, analysis, and visualization capability to maximize the efficiency of data sharing. These advancements will also promote modeling of the dynamics in environment, ecosystem, human society, and the Earth system cross the Third Pole region, providing key data and knowledge supports to decision-making related to the region’s sustainable development.

TPDC complies with the “findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR)” data sharing principles and strengthens its cooperation with international organizations, such as collaborating with WOM to promote the Global Cryosphere Watch project. It also collaborates with the ICIMOD on data exchanging, observation capability, capacity-building, and joint research. As a recommended data repository for international journals like Nature, AGU, ESSD, and Elsevier to encourage data authors to share their data along publications. Additionally, the TPDC provides data support for various international science programs, including TPE, GEWEX/GASS LS4P and WCRP-CORDEX CPTP.