This dataset contains five types of boundaries. 1. TPBoundary_ 2500m: Based on ETOPO5 Global Surface Relief, ENVI+IDL was used to extract data at an elevation of 2500m within the longitude (65~105E) and latitude (20~45N) range in the Tibetan Plateau. 2. TPBoundary_ 3000m: Based on ETOPO5 Global Surface Relief, ENVI+IDL was used to extract data at an elevation of 3000m within the longitude (65~105E) and latitude (20~45N) range in the Tibetan Plateau. 3. TPBoundary_ HF (high_frequency): This boundary is defined according to 2 previous studies. Bingyuan Li (1987) had a systematic discussion on the principles for determining the extent of the Tibetan Plateau and the specific boundaries. From the perspective of the formation and basic characteristics of the Tibetan Plateau, he proposed the basic principles for determining the extent of the Tibetan Plateau based on the geomorphological features, the plateau surface and its altitude, while considering the integrity of the mountain. Yili Zhang (2002) determined the extent and boundaries of the Tibetan Plateau based on the new results of research in related fields and years of field practice. He combined information technology methods to precisely locate and quantitatively analyze the extent and boundary location of the Tibetan Plateau, and concluded that the Tibetan Plateau in China extends from the Pamir Plateau in the west to the Hengduan Mountains in the east, from the southern edge of the Himalayas in the south to the northern side of the Kunlun-Qilian Mountains in the north. On April 14, 2017, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China issued the Announcement on Adding Geographical Names for Public Use in the Southern Tibetan Region (First Batch), adding six geographical names in the southern Tibetan region, including Wo’gyainling, Mila Ri, Qoidêngarbo Ri, Mainquka, Bümo La, and Namkapub Ri. ４. TPBoundary_ New (2021): Along with the in-depth research on the Tibetan Plateau, the improvement of multidisciplinary research and understanding inside and outside the plateau, and the progress of geographic big data and Earth observation science and technology, the development of the 2021 version of the Tibetan Plateau boundary data by Yili Zhang and et al. was completed based on the comprehensive analysis of ASTER GDEM and Google Earth remote sensing images. The range boundary starts from the northern foot of the West Kunlun Mountain-Qilian Mountain Range in the north and reaches the southern foot of the Himalayas and other mountain ranges in the south, with a maximum width of 1,560 km from north to south; from the western edge of the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Pamir Plateau in the west to the eastern edge of the Hengduan Mountains and other mountain ranges in the east, with a maximum length of about 3,360 km from east to west; the latitude and longitude range is 25°59′30″N~40°1′0″N, 67°40′37″E~104°40′57″E, with a total area of 3,083,400km2 and an average altitude of about 4,320m. Administratively, the Tibetan Plateau is distributed in nine countries, including China, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan. ５. TPBoundary_ Rectangle: The rectangle was drawn according to the range of Lon (63~105E) and Lat (20~45N). The data are in latitude and longitude projection WGS84. As the basic data, the boundary of the Tibetan Plateau can be used as a reference basis for various geological data and scientific research on the Tibetan Plateau.

We comprehensively estimated water volume changes for 1132 lakes larger than 1 km2. Overall, the water mass stored in the lakes increased by 169.7±15.1 Gt (3.9±0.4 Gt yr-1) between 1976 and 2019, mainly in the Inner-TP (157.6±11.6 or 3.7±0.3 Gt yr-1). A substantial increase in mass occurred between 1995 and 2019 (214.9±12.7 Gt or 9.0±0.5 Gt yr-1), following a period of decrease (-45.2±8.2 Gt or -2.4±0.4 Gt yr-1) prior to 1995. A slowdown in the rate of water mass increase occurred between 2010 and 2015 (23.1±6.5 Gt or 4.6±1.3 Gt yr-1), followed again by a high value between 2015 and 2019 (65.7±6.7 Gt or 16.4±1.7 Gt yr-1). The increased lake-water mass occurred predominately in glacier-fed lakes (127.1±14.3 Gt) in contrast to non-glacier-fed lakes (42.6±4.9 Gt), and in endorheic lakes (161.9±14.0 Gt) against exorheic lakes (7.8±5.8 Gt) over 1976−2019.

The distribution of lakes in space and its change over time are closely related to agricultural, environmental and ecological issues, and are critical factors for human socio-economic development. In the past decades, satellite based remote sensing has been developed rapidly to provide essential data sources for monitoring temporal lakes dynamics with its advantage of rapidness, wide coverage, and lower cost. This dataset was produced from Landsat images using the automated water detection method (Feng et al, 2015). We collected 96,278 Landsat images (about 25 terabytes) that acquired since 2000 with less than 80% cloud contamination in the arid region of central Asia and Tibetan Plateau. Water is detected in each of the image and then aggregated to monthly temporal resolution by taking advantage of the high-performance processing capability and large data storage provided by Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF) at University of Maryland. The results are validated systematically and quantitatively using manually interpreted dataset, which consists of a set of locations collected by a stratified random sampling strategy to effectively represent different spatial-temporal distributions in the region. The validation suggests high accuracy of the results (overall accuracy: 99.45(±0.59); user accuracy: 85.37%±(3.74); produce accuracy: 98.17(±1.05)).

Based on the existing natural hole data of 15 active layer depth monitoring sites in the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor, the active layer depth distribution map of the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor was simulated using the GIPL2.0 frozen soil model. The model required synthesis of a temperature data set of time series. The temperature data were divided into two phases according to the time spans, which were 1980-2009 and 2010-2015. The data of the first phase were from the Chinese meteorological driving data set (http://dam. Itpcas.ac.cn/rs/?q=data#CMFD_0.1), and the data of the second phase was the application of MODIS surface temperature products (MOD11A1/A2 and MYD11A1/A2) with a spatial resolution of 1 km. In addition, the soil type data required by the model came from the China Soil Database (V1.1) and have a resolution of 1 km. At the same time, the topography was also considered. The research area was classified into 88 types based on the measured soil thermophysical parameters and land cover types, and then the simulation was performed. The simulation results were compared with the field measured data. The results showed that they were highly consistent, and the correlation coefficient reached 0.75. In alpine areas, the average depth of the active layer is below 2.0 m. However, in the river valleys, the average depth of the active layer is above 4.0 m. In the high plain area, the depth of the active layer is usually between 3.0 m and 4.0 m.

Gridded climatic datasets with fine spatial resolution can potentially be used to depict the climatic characteristics across the complex topography of China. In this study we collected records of monthly temperature at 1153 stations and precipitation at 1202 stations in China and neighboring countries to construct a monthly climate dataset in China with a 0.025° resolution (~2.5 km). The dataset, named LZU0025, was designed by Lanzhou University and used a partial thin plate smoothing method embedded in the ANUSPLIN software. The accuracy of LZU0025 was evaluated based on three aspects: (1) Diagnostic statistics from the surface fitting model during 1951–2011. The results indicate a low mean square root of generalized cross validation (RTGCV) for the monthly air temperature surface (1.06 °C) and monthly precipitation surface (1.97 mm1/2). (2) Error statistics of comparisons between interpolated monthly LZU0025 with the withholding of climatic data from 265 stations during 1951–2011. The results show that the predicted values closely tracked the real true values with values of mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.59 °C and 70.5 mm, and standard deviation of the mean error (STD) of 1.27 °C and 122.6 mm. In addition, the monthly STDs exhibited a consistent pattern of variation with RTGCV. (3) Comparison with other datasets. This was done in two ways. The first was via comparison of standard deviation, mean and time trend derived from all datasets to a reference dataset released by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), using Taylor diagrams. The second was to compare LZU0025 with the station dataset in the Tibetan Plateau. Taylor diagrams show that the standard deviation, mean and time trend derived from LZU had a higher correlation with that produced by the CMA, and the centered normalized root-mean-square difference for this index derived from LZU and CMA was lower. LZU0025 had high correlation with the Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observation Project (CEOP) - Asian Monsoon Project, (CAMP) Tibet surface meteorology station dataset for air temperature, despite a non-significant correlation for precipitation at a few stations. Based on this comprehensive analysis, we conclude that LZU0025 is a reliable dataset. LZU0025, which has a fine resolution, can be used to identify a greater number of climate types, such as tundra and subpolar continental, along the Himalayan Mountain. We anticipate that LZU0025 can be used for the monitoring of regional climate change and precision agriculture modulation under global climate change.

Qinghai Tibet Plateau is the largest permafrost area in the world. At present, some permafrost distribution maps have been compiled. However, due to the limited data sources, unclear standards, insufficient verification and lack of high-quality spatial data sets, there is great uncertainty in drawing Permafrost Distribution Maps on TP. Based on the improved medium resolution imaging spectrometer (MODIS) surface temperature (LSTS) model of 1 km clear sky mod11a2 (Terra MODIS) and myd11a2 (Aqua MODIS) product (reprocessing version 5) in 2003-2012, the data set simulates the distribution of permafrost and generates the permafrost map of Qinghai Tibet Plateau. The map was verified by field observation, soil moisture content and bulk density. Permafrost attributes mainly include: seasonally frozen ground, permafrost and unfrozen ground. The data set provides more detailed data of Permafrost Distribution and basic data for the study of permafrost in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau.

Mean annual ground temperature (MAGT) at a depth of zero annual amplitude and permafrost thermal stability type are fundamental importance for engineering planning and design, ecosystem management in permafrost region. This dataset is produced by integrating remotely sensed freezing degree-days and thawing degree-days, snow cover days, leaf area index, soil bulk density, high-accuracy soil moisture data, and in situ MAGT measurements from 237 boreholes for the 2010s (2005-2015) on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) by using an ensemble learning method that employs a support vector regression (SVR) model based on distance-blocked resampling training data with 200 repetitions. Validation of the new permafrost map indicates that it is probably the most accurate of all available maps at present. The RMSE of MAGT is approximately 0.75 °C and the bias is approximately 0.01 °C. This map shows that the total area of permafrost on the TP is approximately 115.02 (105.47-129.59) *104 km2. The areas corresponding to the very stable, stable, semi-stable, transitional, and unstable types are 0.86*104 km2, 9.62*104 km2, 38.45*104 km2, 42.29*104 km2, and 23.80*104 km2, respectively. This new dataset is available for evaluate the permafrost change in the future on the TP as a baseline. More details can be found in Ran et al., (2020) that published at Science China Earth Sciences.

This dataset includes the monthly precipitation data with 0.0083333 arc degree (~1km) for China from Jan 1901 to Dec 2020. The data form belongs to NETCDF, namely .nc file. The unit of the data is 0.1 mm. The dataset was spatially downscaled from CRU TS v4.02 with WorldClim datasets based on Delta downscaling method. The dataset was evaluated by 496 national weather stations across China, and the evaluation indicated that the downscaled dataset is reliable for the investigations related to climate change across China. The dataset covers the main land area of China, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions, and excluding islands and reefs in South China Sea.

This data set is based on China's second inventory data, Landsat series optical image data with a spatial resolution of 30 meters and cloud coverage of less than 10% and SRTM and other data using ArcGIS, ENVI, Google Earth and other processing software and extracting the glacial lake boundary within 10 km of the glacier boundary by artificial visual interpretation. In addition, the data set adds attributes such as glacial lake type, the mountain range, the province, and the basin to the data as well as quality checking and accuracy verification for the interpreted data. The spatial resolution is 30 meters. It consists of two parts: the glacial lake distribution area vector file and the Inventory Data set of glacial lakes in west China in 2015. It can provide reference data for glacial lake-glacier coupling, water resource utilization and management in west China and can also be used as basic data for regional climate change and cryospheric studies.

DEM is the English abbreviation of Digital Elevation Model, which is the important original data of watershed topography and feature recognition.DEM is based on the principle that the watershed is divided into cells of m rows and n columns, the average elevation of each quadrilateral is calculated, and then the elevation is stored in a two-dimensional matrix.Since DEM data can reflect local topographic features with a certain resolution, a large amount of surface morphology information can be extracted through DEM, which includes slope, slope direction and relationship between cells of watershed grid cells, etc..At the same time, the surface flow path, river network and watershed boundary can be determined according to certain algorithm.Therefore, to extract watershed features from DEM, a good watershed structure pattern is the premise and key of the design algorithm. Elevation data map 1km data formed according to 1:250,000 contour lines and elevation points in China, including DEM, hillshade, Slope and Aspect maps. Data set projection: Two projection methods: Equal Area projection Albers Conical Equal Area (105, 25, 47) Geodetic coordinates WGS84 coordinate system