Talk:Tibetan Plateau/Archive 1

Area units
The figure "1,000 to 2,500 kilometers" appears to be a length or a width. It should be written as an area, my guess would be around several million km^2. Could someone fix this??

I cant beleive it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.0.119.105 (talk) 14:45, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Geology and Origin
Perhaps a summary paragraph on the geological origin of this pecular land form? See Geography of Tibet & Geology of the Himalaya. WBardwin (talk) 05:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Role in monsoons?
The section "Role in Monsoon Regime" does not actually explain the Tibetan Plateau's role in creating monsoons over South Asia. It explains how monsoons form in general, but stops short of explaining how and why the plateau's geography causes monsoons. Can someone fix this? Jaybird vt (talk) 16:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

25% of the world's mud ?
"Between them, these rivers carry 25% of the world's mud."

Can anybody confirm or give a source for this percentage? Lawrence Lavigne 23:04, May 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * gives the same figure- I don't think that's where I got it from in the first place, but perhaps we're using the same ultimate source. Mark1 02:05, 9 May 2005 (UTC)


 * If you could simply assume the region is in equilibrium with erosion equalling uplift, you could calculate the annual production of mud as uplift times area. For example 1 cm of uplift over 1 million square km should produce ten billion cubic meters or ten cubic kilometers of mud.


 * A few complications:


 * 1) Some fraction of the mass is actually soluble and ends up as salts etc. rather than sediment
 * 2) There may be net uplift.  Are parts of the plateau and mountains actually going higher?
 * 3) A substantial part of the plateau has no outlet to the sea.  That fraction of sediments ends up in the lowest parts of local Endorheic basins rather than washing down into countries on the periphery (India, Burma, China, etc.) and ultimately into oceans.  Altough it's still mud, implications are different. LADave (talk) 19:06, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Influence on Ice Age climate
It is a matter of debate to what extent the Tibetan Plateau was ice covered. Due to rainshadow the ice may have been limited to the Himalayas. Anyway, I find it misleading to say that there was no monsoon during the Ice Ages. To me it makes it sound like the Indian subcontinent did not get any yearly rain at all. According to most of the subcontinent was steppe at the peak of the last Ice Age. (An easier to read version can be found here.) In the eastern part of present-day India there was an area with tropical dry woodland. This area must have got sufficient amounts of rain almost every year for the trees to survive. Southeast Asia was about half covered in forest showing there was monsoon further east. However, this can be explained by present-day eastern China warming up during the summer months.

I also want to point out that the Sahara desert was actually larger during the Ice Ages. The so called Wet Sahara phases occurred at the beginning of interglacials. On the other hand West Africa was not as dry as Central or East Africa. So changed wind patterns may have increased rainfall there during the Ice Ages.

Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden (talk) 19:59, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Tibetan Plateau. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090416181043/http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/monsoons/causesofmonsoons.shtml to http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/monsoons/causesofmonsoons.shtml
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150201221817/http://www.thirdpolecast.com/ to http://www.thirdpolecast.com/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 16:49, 22 January 2018 (UTC)