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.

The data set was produced based on the SRTM DEM data collected by Space Shuttle Radar terrain mission in 2016, the reference data such as river, lake and other water system auxiliary data , using the arcgis hydrological model to analyze and extract the river network. There are 12 sub-basins over the Tibet Plateau, including AmuDayra、Brahmaputra、Ganges、Hexi、Indus、Inner、Mekong、Qaidam、Salween、Tarim、Yangtze、Yellow. The outer boundary is based on the 2500-metre contour line and national boundaries.

This data set is based on the evaluation of existing land cover data and the evidence theory，including a 1:100,000 land use map for the year 20 2000、a 1:1,000,000 vegetation map、a 1:1,000,000 swamp-wetland map, a glacier map and a Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer land cover map for China in 2001 (MODIS2001) were merged，Finally, the decision is made based on the principle of maximum trust, and a new 1KM land cover data of China in 2000 with IGBP classification system is produced. The new land cover data not only maintain the overall accuracy of China's land use data, but also supplement the information of vegetation types and vegetation seasons in China's vegetation map, update China's wetland map, add the latest information of China's glacier map, and make the classification system more general.

Based on the analysis of brgdgts and hydrogen isotopes of leaf wax in lake sediments from Tengchong Qinghai (tcqh) in Yunnan Province, this study shows for the first time the high-resolution annual average temperature change history of low latitude land since the last glacial period (since the last 88000 years). According to the annual average temperature of South Asia established by tcqh core, there are two warm periods of 88000-71000 years and 45000-22000 years in this region, and the temperature range is about 2-3 ° C. Since the Holocene, the temperature has been increasing for about 1-2 years ° C。

This data set is collected from the supplementary information part of the paper: Yao, T. , Thompson, L. , & Yang, W. . (2012). Different glacier status with atmospheric circulations in tibetan plateau and surroundings. Nature Climate Change, 1580, 1-5. This paper report on the glacier status over the past 30 years by investigating the glacial retreat of 82 glaciers, area reductionof 7,090 glaciers and mass-balance change of 15 glaciers. This data set contains 8 tables, the names and content are as follows: Data list: The data name list of the rest tables; t1: Distribution of Glaciers in the TP and surroundings; t2: Data and method for analyzing glacial area reduction in each basin; t3: Glacial area reduction during the past three decades from remote sensing images in the TP and surroundings; t4: Glacial length fluctuationin the TP and surroundings in the past three decades; t5: Detailed information on the glaciers for recent mass balance measurement in the TP and surroundings; t6: Recent annual mass balances in different regions in the TP; t7: Mass balance of Long-time series for the Qiyi, Xiaodongkemadi and Kangwure Glaciers in the TP. See attachments for data details: Supplementary information.pdf, Different glacier status with atmospheric circulations in Tibetan Plateau and surroundings.pdf.

Snow cover dataset is produced by snow and cloud identification method based on optical instrument observation data, covering the time from 1989 to 2018 (two periods, from January to April and from October to December) and the region of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (17°N-41°N, 65°E-106°E) with daily product, which takes equal latitude and longitude projection with 0.01°×0.01° spatial resolution, and characterizes whether the ground under clear sky or transparent thin cloud is covered by snow. The input data sources include AVHRR L1 data of NOAA and MetOp serials of satellites, and L1 data corresponding to AVHRR channels taken from TERRA/MODIS. Decision Tree algorithm (DT) with dynamic thresholds is employed independent of cloud mask and its cloud detection emphasizes on reserving snow, particularly under transparency cirrus. It considers a variety of methods for different situations, such as ice-cloud over the water-cloud, snow in forest and sand, thin snow or melting snow, etc. Besides those, setting dynamic threshold based on land-surface type, DEM and season variation, deleting false snow in low latitude forest covered by heavy aerosol or soot, referring to maximum monthly snowlines and minimum snow surface brightness temperature, and optimizing discrimination program, these techniques all contribute to DT. DT discriminates most snow and cloud under normal circumstances, but underestimates snow on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in October. Daily product achieves about 95% average coincidence rate of snow and non-snow identification compared to ground-based snow depth observation in years. The dataset is stored in the standard HDF4 files each having two SDSs of snow cover and quality code with the dimensions of 4100-column and 2400-line. Complete attribute descriptions is written in them.

A multi-layer soil particle-size distribution dataset (sand, silt and clay content), based on USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) standard for regional land and climate modelling in China. was developed The 1:1,000,000 scale soil map of China and 8595 soil profiles from the Second National Soil Survey served as the starting point for this work. We reclassified the inconsistent soil profiles into the proper soil type of the map as much as possible because the soil classification names of the map units and profiles were not quite the same. The sand, silt and clay maps were derived using the polygon linkage method, which linked soil profiles and map polygons considering the distance between them, the sample sizes of the profiles, and soil classification information. For comparison, a soil type linkage was also generated by linking the map units and soil profiles with the same soil type. The quality of the derived soil fractions was reliable. Overall, the map polygon linkage offered better results than the soil type linkage or the Harmonized World Soil Database. The dataset, with a 1-km resolution, can be applied to land and climate modelling at a regional scale. Data characteristics： projection：projection Coverage: China Resolution: 0.00833 (about 1 km) Data format: FLT, TIFF Value range: 0%-100% Document describing： Floating point raster files include: Sand1. FLT, clay1. FLT -- surface (0-30cm) sand, clay content. Sand2. FLT, clay2. FLT -- content of sand and clay in the bottom layer (30-100cm). PSD. HDR -- header file: Ncols - the number of columns Nrows- rows Xllcorner - latitude in the lower left corner Yllcorner - longitude of the lower left corner Cellsize - cellsize NODATA_value - a null value byteorder - LSBFIRST, Least Significant Bit First TIFF raster files include: Sand1. Tif, clay1. Tif - surface (0-30cm) sand, clay content. Sand2. Tif, clay2. Tif - bottom layer (30-100cm) sand, clay content.

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)).

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.

The dataset includes soil physical and chemical attributes: pH value, organic matter fraction, cation exchange capacity, root abundance, total nitrogen (N), total phosphorus (P), total potassium (K), alkali-hydrolysable N, available P, available K, exchangeable H+, Al3+, Ca2+, Mg2+, K+ , Na+, horizon thickness, soil profile depth, sand, silt and clay fractions, rock fragment, bulk density, porosity, structure, consistency and soil color. Quality control information (QC) was provided. The resolution is 30 arc-seconds (about 1 km at the equator). The vertical variation of soil property was captured by eight layers to the depth of 2.3 m (i.e. 0- 0.045, 0.045- 0.091, 0.091- 0.166, 0.166- 0.289, 0.289- 0.493, 0.493- 0.829, 0.829- 1.383 and 1.383- 2.296 m) for convenience of use in the Common Land Model and the Community Land Model (CLM). 1.THSCH.nc: Saturated water content of FCH 2.PSI_S.nc: Saturated capillary potential of FCH 3.LAMBDA.nc: Pore size distribution index of FCH 4.K_SCH.nc: Saturate hydraulic conductivity of FCH 5.THR.nc: Residual moisture content of FGM 6.THSGM.nc: Saturated water content of FGM 7.ALPHA.nc: The inverse of the air-entry value of FGM 8.N.nc: The shape parameter of FGM 9.L.nc: The pore-connectivity parameter of FGM 10.K_SVG.nc: Saturated hydraulic conductivity of FGM 11.TH33.nc: Water content at -33 kPa of suction pressure, or field capacity 12.TH1500.nc: Water content at -1500 kPa of suction pressure, or permanent wilting point