International Symposium on Third Pole Environment

First Circular 

Chongqing, China

November 14-17, 2023

ANNOUNCEMENT！

The International Symposium on Third Pole Environment will be held November 14^th to 17^th, 2023 in Chongqing, China.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS 

The Third Pole, home to over a billion people, is a unique geographic region centered on the Tibetan Plateau that includes the Himalayas and other surrounding mountain ranges. Here the complex physical and ecological systems are intricately linked and interacted, which makes the region very sensitive to environmental changes from both natural processes and anthropogenic activities. The impacts may extend into the surrounding countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Due to its large size and high elevation, the Third Pole plays a significant role in both regional and global atmospheric circulation and is regarded by the international academic community as the mid-latitude complement to the Arctic and Antarctica.

TPE, an international academic community initiated in 2009, has always valued international, interdisciplinary cooperation and approaches since its formation. It uses various workshops, meetings, training schools and other gathering events to bring together scientists from different disciplines who share an interest in the Third Pole region. Those international exchanges and cooperation in the past decade have led to great progress in the development of the TPE Program with many exciting prospects for Third Pole research on the horizon and establishment of a network of satellite offices across the world.

The sudden outbreak of the pandemic has made such collaborations almost impossible in the past 3 years. Yet the growing awareness of the complexity and uniqueness of the Third Pole environment has drawn more scientists to be engaged in the subject. Their persistence and perseverance despite all difficulties has seen exciting discoveries on the Third Pole earth system science. These academic breakthroughs provoked more thoughts and warrant further communications to jointly tackle the global climate change issue, a grand challenge that can only be solved through international collaborations.

The International Symposium on Third Pole Environment will be held in Chongqing, China, November 14-17, 2023. The symposium aims to promote TPE and showcase academic achievements and their relevance to society, advance current understanding of the Third Pole environment to allow early adaptation of the TPE region to climate change and challenges of the future, identify academic frontier issues relating to environmental changes, and lay out future plans to further development.

THEMES：

· Climate change over the Tibetan Plateau and its global linkages

· Hydrological Cycle & water security

·  Ecosystem & Biodiversity

· Biogeochemical Cycle

·  Environment & Health

·  High Resolution Paleoclimate Records and Abrupt Climate Change

·  Prehistoric Human Activity

·  Impact of Plateau on climatic and organic evolution

·  Plateau Uplift and its effects on mineralogy and petrology

·  Natural Hazards

·  Observation, model and data integration

·  Knowledge & Actions

ORGANIZATION

Academic Steering Committee

Co-Chairs:  

Prof. Tandong Yao, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS

Prof. Lonnie G. Thompson, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and the School of

 Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University

Prof. Volker Mosbrugger, Senckenberg Nature Research Society

Prof. Deliang Chen, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Prof. Philippe Ciais, IPSL - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, France

Executive Committee：

Shilong Piao, ITPCAS and Peking University

Baosheng An, STEP and ITPCAS

Fan Zhang, ITPCAS

Xiaoxin Yang, ITPCAS

Weicai Wang, STEP and ITPCAS

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Field excursions will be organized after the symposium to regions in and/or surrounding the Tibetan Plateau. Further information including the agenda, local accommodations and transportation, will be announced in the following circulars. Specific questions related to the Symposium may be emailed to tpe@itpcas.ac.cn.