This map was compiled by Li Xin and others in 2008 in order to re-count the permafrost area in China and based on the analysis of the existing permafrost map in China. It consists of three parts, of which the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau part uses the simulated permafrost map of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (Nanzhuo Copper, 2002), the northeast part comes from the "14 million map of China's Glacier, Frozen Soil and Desert" (Institute of Environment and Engineering in Cold and Arid Regions, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2006), and the other part uses the map of China's permafrost zoning and types (1: 10 million) (Zhou Youwu and others, 2000). More Information References (Institute of Environment and Engineering in Cold and Arid Regions, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2006; Nanzhuo Copper, 2002; Zhou Youwu et al., 2000; Li et al, 2008）。

The time coverage of this data is (1961-1990). The station data set includes 222 stations of precipitation data and 202 stations of temperature data. In order to fill the meteorological data in the surrounding area of ​​Xinjiang in the study area, this data set uses the Central Asia Temperature and Precipitation Data (1879-2003), and some site data of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia (Global Historical Climate Network) and CRU dataset, in addition to the Xinjiang Meteorological Data Set, Qinghai, and Gansu Daily Data. There is a large amount of missing data in the used dataset, which will affect the accuracy of the grid data generated by the extrapolation method. Therefore, this article deletes sites with consecutive missing years, and uses sites adjacent to the site to replace missing sites with fewer years (less than 3 years). For sites where the spatial distribution of sites is too sparse, BP neural network is used to fit and reconstruct sites with severely missing data, such as Tazhong (51747), Andi Township (51848), and Hangya (51915). Based on the pre-processed data, the interpolation method of this data set is the Cressman objective analysis method. The monthly average temperature and monthly precipitation are extrapolated to the study area, and the grid period observation data with a horizontal resolution of 0.5 ° is obtained. This data contains two files: temperature data of xinjiangtemp.nc and precipitation data of xinjiangpre2.nc.

Based on the WRF model, using ERA5 reanalysis data as the initial and boundary fields, the high-resolution low-level atmospheric structure and the earth atmosphere exchange data set of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau are preliminarily obtained by the method of dynamic downscaling. The time range of this data set is from August 1 to August 31, 2014, with a time resolution of 1 hour, a horizontal range of 25 °N-40 °N, 70oE-105oE, and a horizontal resolution of 0.05 °. The data format is NetCDF, and one file is output every hour. The file is named after the date. The lower atmospheric structure data includes temperature, relative humidity, water vapor mixing ratio, potential height, meridional wind and latitudinal wind meteorological elements, with 34 isobaric surfaces in the vertical direction; the surface air exchange data set includes the upward / downward short wave radiation, upward / downward long wave radiation, surface sensible heat and flux, 2m air temperature and water vapor mixing ratio, 10m wind, etc. The data set can provide data support for the study of weather process and climate environment in the Tibetan Plateau.

This dataset contains the flux measurements from site No.16 eddy covariance system (EC) in the flux observation matrix from 6 June to 17 September, 2012. The site (100.36411° E, 38.84931° N) was located in a cropland (maize surface) in Daman irrigation district, which is near Zhangye, Gansu Province. The elevation is 1564.31 m. The EC was installed at a height of 4.9 m; the sampling rate was 10 Hz. The sonic anemometer faced north, and the separation distance between the sonic anemometer and the CO2/H2O gas analyzer (Gill&Li7500) was 0.2 m. Raw data acquired at 10 Hz were processed using the Eddypro post-processing software (Li-Cor Company, http://www.licor.com/env/products/ eddy_covariance/software.html), including spike detection, lag correction of H2O/CO2 relative to the vertical wind component, sonic virtual temperature correction, angle of attack correction, coordinate rotation (2-D rotation), corrections for density fluctuation (Webb-Pearman-Leuning correction), and frequency response correction. The EC data were subsequently averaged over 30 min periods. Moreover, the observation data quality was divided into three classes according to the quality assessment method of stationarity (Δst) and the integral turbulent characteristics test (ITC), which was proposed by Foken and Wichura [1996]: class 1 (level 0: Δst<30 and ITC<30), class 2 (level 1: Δst<100 and ITC<100), and class 3 (level 2: Δst>100 and ITC>100), representing high-, medium-, and low-quality data, respectively. In addition to the above processing steps, the half-hourly flux data were screened in a four-step procedure: (1) data from periods of sensor malfunction were rejected; (2) data before or after 1 h of precipitation were rejected; (3) incomplete 30 min data were rejected when the missing data constituted more than 3% of the 30 min raw record; and (4) data were rejected at night when the friction velocity (u*) was less than 0.1 m/s. There were 48 records per day; the missing data were replaced with -6999. Moreover, suspicious data were marked in red. The released data contained the following variables: data/time, wind direction (Wdir, °), wind speed (Wnd, m/s), the standard deviation of the lateral wind (Std_Uy, m/s), virtual temperature (Tv, ℃), H2O mass density (H2O, g/m^3), CO2 mass density (CO2, mg/m^3), friction velocity (ustar, m/s), stability (z/L), sensible heat flux (Hs, W/m^2), latent heat flux (LE, W/m^2), carbon dioxide flux (Fc, mg/ (m^2s)), quality assessment of the sensible heat flux (QA_Hs), quality assessment of the latent heat flux (QA_LE), and quality assessment of the carbon flux (QA_Fc). In this dataset, the time of 0:30 corresponds to the average data for the period between 0:00 and 0:30; the data were stored in *.xlsx format. For more information, please refer to Liu et al. (2016) (for multi-scale observation experiment or sites information), Xu et al. (2013) (for data processing) in the Citation section.

This dataset contains the flux measurements from site No.7 eddy covariance system (EC) in the flux observation matrix from 29 May to 18 September, 2012. The site (100.36521° E, 38.87676° N) was located in a cropland (maize surface) in Yingke irrigation district, which is near Zhangye, Gansu Province. The elevation is 1556.39 m. The EC was installed at a height of 3.8 m; the sampling rate was 10 Hz. The sonic anemometer faced north, and the separation distance between the sonic anemometer and the CO2/H2O gas analyzer (CSAT3&Li7500A) was 0.15 m. Raw data acquired at 10 Hz were processed using the Edire post-processing software (University of Edinburgh, http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/abs/research/micromet/EdiRe/), including spike detection, lag correction of H2O/CO2 relative to the vertical wind component, sonic virtual temperature correction, coordinate rotation (2-D rotation), corrections for density fluctuation (Webb-Pearman-Leuning correction), and frequency response correction. The EC data were subsequently averaged over 30 min periods. Moreover, the observation data quality was divided into three classes according to the quality assessment method of stationarity (Δst) and the integral turbulent characteristics test (ITC), which was proposed by Foken and Wichura [1996]: class 1 (level 0: Δst<30 and ITC<30), class 2 (level 1: Δst<100 and ITC<100), and class 3 (level 2: Δst>100 and ITC>100), representing high-, medium-, and low-quality data, respectively. In addition to the above processing steps, the half-hourly flux data were screened in a four-step procedure: (1) data from periods of sensor malfunction were rejected; (2) data before or after 1 h of precipitation were rejected; (3) incomplete 30 min data were rejected when the missing data constituted more than 3% of the 30 min raw record; and (4) data were rejected at night when the friction velocity (u*) was less than 0.1 m/s. There were 48 records per day; the missing data were replaced with -6999. Moreover, suspicious data were marked in red. The released data contained the following variables: data/time, wind direction (Wdir, °), wind speed (Wnd, m/s), the standard deviation of the lateral wind (Std_Uy, m/s), virtual temperature (Tv, ℃), H2O mass density (H2O, g/m^3), CO2 mass density (CO2, mg/m^3), friction velocity (ustar, m/s), stability (z/L), sensible heat flux (Hs, W/m^2), latent heat flux (LE, W/m^2), carbon dioxide flux (Fc, mg/ (m^2s)), quality assessment of the sensible heat flux (QA_Hs), quality assessment of the latent heat flux (QA_LE), and quality assessment of the carbon flux (QA_Fc). In this dataset, the time of 0:30 corresponds to the average data for the period between 0:00 and 0:30; the data were stored in *.xlsx format. For more information, please refer to Liu et al. (2016) (for multi-scale observation experiment or sites information), Xu et al. (2013) (for data processing) in the Citation section.

The data set includes meteorological data from the Ngari Desert Observation and Research Station from 2009 to 2017. It includes the following basic meteorological parameters: temperature (1.5 m from the ground, once every half hour, unit: Celsius), relative humidity (1.5 m from the ground, once every half hour, unit: %), wind speed (1.5 m from the ground, once every half hour, unit: m/s), wind direction (1.5 m from the ground, once every half hour, unit: degrees), atmospheric pressure (1.5 m from the ground, once every half hour, unit: hPa), precipitation (once every 24 hours, unit: mm), water vapour pressure (unit: kPa), evaporation (unit: mm), downward shortwave radiation (unit: W/m2), upward shortwave radiation (unit: W/m2), downward longwave radiation (unit: W/m2), upward longwave radiation (unit: W/m2), net radiation (unit: W/m2), surface albedo (unit: %). The temporal resolution of the data is one day. The data were directly downloaded from the Ngari automatic weather station. The precipitation data represent daily precipitation measured by the automatic rain and snow gauge and corrected based on manual observations. The other observation data are the daily mean value of the measurements taken every half hour. Instrument models of different observations: temperature and humidity: HMP45C air temperature and humidity probe; precipitation: T200-B rain and snow gauge sensor; wind speed and direction: Vaisala 05013 wind speed and direction sensor; net radiation: Kipp Zonen NR01 net radiation sensor; atmospheric pressure: Vaisala PTB210 atmospheric pressure sensor; collector model: CR 1000; acquisition interval: 30 minutes. The data table is processed and quality controlled by a particular person based on observation records. Observations and data acquisition are carried out in strict accordance with the instrument operating specifications, and some data with obvious errors are removed when processing the data table.

CMADS V1.0(The China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT model Version 1.0)Version of the data set introduces the technology of STMAS assimilation algorithm . It was constructed using multiple technologies and scientific methods, including loop nesting of data, projection of resampling models, and bilinear interpolation. The CMADS series of datasets can be used to drive various hydrological models, such as SWAT, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model, and the Storm Water Management model (SWMM). It also allows users to conveniently extract a wide range of meteorological elements for detailed climatic analyses. Data sources for the CMADS series include nearly 40,000 regional automatic stations under China’s 2,421 national automatic and business assessment centres. This ensures that the CMADS datasets have wide applicability within the country, and that data accuracy was vastly improved. The CMADS series of datasets has undergone finishing and correction to match the specific format of input and driving data of SWAT models. This reduces the volume of complex work that model builders have to deal with. An index table of the various elements encompassing all of East Asia was also established for SWAT models. This allows the models to utilize the datasets directly, thus eliminating the need for any format conversion or calculations using weather generators. Consequently, significant improvements to the modelling speed and output accuracy of SWAT models were achieved. Most of the source data in the CMADS datasets are derived from CLDAS in China and other reanalysis data in the world. The integration of air temperature, air pressure, humidity, and wind velocity data was mainly achieved through the LAPS/STMAS system. Precipitation data were stitched using CMORPH’s global precipitation products and the National Meteorological Information Center’s data of China (which is based on CMORPH’s integrated precipitation products). The latter contains daily precipitation records observed at 2,400 national meteorological stations and the CMORPH satellite’s inversion precipitation products.The inversion algorithm for incoming solar radiation at the ground surface makes use of the discrete longitudinal method by Stamnes et al.(1988)to calculate radiation transmission. The resolutions for CMADS V1.0, V1.1, V1.2, and V1.3 were 1/3°, 1/4°, 1/8°, and 1/16°, respectively. In CMADS V1.0 (at a spatial resolution of 1/3°), East Asia was spatially divided into 195 × 300 grid points containing 58,500 stations. Despite being at the same spatial resolution as CMADS V1.0, CMADS V1.1 contains more data, with 260 × 400 grid points containing 104,000 stations. For both versions, the stations’ daily data include average solar radiation, average temperature, average pressure, maximum and minimum temperature, specific humidity, cumulative precipitation, and average wind velocity. The CMADS comprises other variables for any hydrological model（under 'For-other-model' folder ）: Daily Average Temperature, Daily Maximum Temperature, Daily Minimum Temperature, Daily cumulative precipitation (20-20h), Daily average Relative Humidity, Daily average Specific Humidity, Daily average Solar Radiation, Daily average Wind, and Daily average Atmospheric Pressure. Introduction to metadata of CMADS CMADS storage path description:(CMADS was divided into two datesets) 1.CMADS-V1.0\For-swat\ --specifically driving the SWAT model 2.CMADS-V1.0\For-other-model\ --specifically driving the other hydrological model(VIC,SWMM,etc.) CMADS--\For-swat-2009\ folder contain:(Station\ and Fork\) 1).Station\ Relative-Humidity-58500\ Daily average relative humidity(fraction) Precipitation-58500\ Daily accumulated 24-hour precipitation(mm) Solar radiation-58500\ Daily average solar radiation(MJ/m2) Tmperature-58500\ Daily maximum and minimum temperature(℃) Wind-58500\ Daily average wind speed(m/s) Where R, P, S, T, W+ dimensional grid number - the number of longitude grid is the station in the above five folders respectively.(Where R,P,S,T,W respective Daily average relative humidity,Daily cumulative precipitation(24h),Daily mean solar radiation(MJ/m2),Daily maximum and minimum temperature(℃) and Daily mean wind speed (m/s)) respectively.Data format is (.dbf) 2).Fork\ (Station index table over East Asia) PCPFORK.txt (Precipitation index table) RHFORK.txt (Relative humidity index table) SORFORK.txt (Solar radiation index table) TMPFORK.txt (Temperature index table) WINDFORK.txt (Wind speed index) CMADS--\For-swat-2012\ folder contain:(Station\ and Fork\) Storage structure is consistency with \For-swat- 2009\.However, all the data in this directory are only available in TXT format and can be readed by SWAT2012. 3)\For-other-model\ (Includes all weather input data required by the any hydrologic model (daily).) Atmospheric-Pressure-txt\ Daily average atmospheric pressure(hPa) Average-Temperature-txt\ Daily average temperature(℃) Maximum-Temperature-txt\ Daily maximum temperature(℃) Minimum-Temperature-txt\ Daily minimum temperature(℃) Precipitation-txt\ Daily accumulated 24-hour precipitation (mm) Relative-Humidity-txt\ Daily average relative humidity(fraction) Solar-Radiation-txt\ Daily average solar radiation(MJ/m2) Specific-Humidity-txt\ Daily average Specific Humidity(g/kg) Wind-txt\ Daily average wind speed(m/s) Data storage information: data set storage format is .dbf and .txt Other data information: Total data: 33.6GB Occupied space: 35.2GB Time: From year 2008 to year 2016 Time resolution: Daily Geographical scope description: East Asia Longitude: 60°E The most east longitude: 160°E North latitude: 65°N Most southern latitude: 0°N Number of stations: 58500 stations Spatial resolution: 1/3 * 1/3 * grid points Vertical range: None

Chinese Cryospheric Information System is a comprehensive information system for the management and analysis of Chinese Cryospheric data. The establishment of Chinese Cryospheric Information System is to meet the needs of earth system science, to provide parameters and validation data for the development of response and feedback model of frozen soil, glacier and snow cover to global change under GIS framework; on the other hand, it is to systemically sort out and rescue valuable cryospheric data, to provide a scientific, efficient and safe management and division for it Analysis tools. The basic datasets of the Tibet Plateau mainly takes the Tibetan Plateau as the research region, ranging from longitude 70 -- 105 ° east and latitude 20 -- 40 ° north, containing the following types of data: 1. Cryosphere data. Includes: Permafrost type (Frozengd), (Fromap); Snow depth distribution (Snowdpt) Quatgla (Quatgla) 2. Natural environment and resources. Includes: Terrain: elevation, elevation zoning, slope, slope direction (DEM); Hydrology: surface water (Stram_line), (Lake); Basic geology: Quatgeo, Hydrogeo; Surface properties: Vegetat; 4. Climate data: temperature, surface temperature, and precipitation. 3. Socio-economic resources (Stations) : distribution of meteorological Stations on the Tibetan Plateau and it surrounding areas. 4. Response model of plateau permafrost to global change (named "Fgmodel"): permafrost distribution data in 2009, 2049 and 2099 were projected. Please refer to the following documents (in Chinese): "Design of Chinese Cryospheric Information System.doc", "Datasheet of Chinese Cryospheric Information System.DOC", "Database of the Tibetan Plateau.DOC" and "Database of the Tibetan Plateau 2.DOC".

Chinese Cryospheric Information System is a comprehensive information system for the management and analysis of cryospheric data over China. The establishment of Chinese Cryospheric Information System is to meet the needs of earth system science, and provide parameters and verification data for the development of response and feedback models of permafrost, glacier and snow cover to global changes under GIS framework. On the other hand, the system collates and rescues valuable cryospheric data to provide a scientific, efficient and safe management and analysis tool. Chinese Cryospheric Information System selected three regions with different spatial scales as its main research areas to highlight the research focus. The research area along the Qinghai-Tibet highway is mainly about 700 kilometers long from Xidatan to Naqu, and 20 to 30 kilometers wide on both sides of the highway. The datasets of the Tibetan highway contains the following types of data: 1. Cryosphere data.Including: snow depth distribution. 2. Natural environment and resources.Include: Digital elevation topography (DEM) : elevation elevation, elevation zoning, slope and slope direction; Fundamental geology: Quatgeo 3. Boreholes: drilling data of 200 boreholes along the qinghai-tibet highway. Engineering geological profile (CAD) : lithologic distribution, water content, grain fraction data, etc 4. Model of glacier mass equilibrium distribution along qinghai-tibet highway: prediction of frozen soil grid data. The graphic data along the qinghai-tibet highway includes 13 map scales of 1:250,000.The grid size is 100×100m. For details, please refer to the documents (in Chinese): "Chinese Cryospheric Information System design. Doc", "Chinese Cryospheric Information System data dictionary. Doc", "Database of the Tibetan highway. Doc".

Snow is a significant component of the ecosystem and water resources in high-mountain Asia (HMA). Therefore, accurate, continuous, and long-term snow monitoring is indispensable for the water resources management and economic development. The present study improves the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard Terra and Aqua satellites 8 d (“d” denotes “day”) composite snow cover Collection 6 (C6) products, named MOD10A2.006 (Terra) and MYD10A2.006 (Aqua), for HMA with a multistep approach. The primary purpose of this study was to reduce uncertainty in the Terra–Aqua MODIS snow cover products and generate a combined snow cover product. For reducing underestimation mainly caused by cloud cover, we used seasonal, temporal, and spatial filters. For reducing overestimation caused by MODIS sensors, we combined Terra and Aqua MODIS snow cover products, considering snow only if a pixel represents snow in both the products; otherwise it is classified as no snow, unlike some previous studies which consider snow if any of the Terra or Aqua product identifies snow. Our methodology generates a new product which removes a significant amount of uncertainty in Terra and Aqua MODIS 8 d composite C6 products comprising 46 % overestimation and 3.66 % underestimation, mainly caused by sensor limitations and cloud cover, respectively. The results were validated using Landsat 8 data, both for winter and summer at 20 well-distributed sites in the study area. Our validated adopted methodology improved accuracy by 10 % on average, compared to Landsat data. The final product covers the period from 2002 to 2018, comprising a combination of snow and glaciers created by merging Randolph Glacier Inventory version 6.0 (RGI 6.0) separated as debris-covered and debris-free with the final snow product MOYDGL06*. We have processed approximately 746 images of both Terra and Aqua MODIS snow containing approximately 100 000 satellite individual images. Furthermore, this product can serve as a valuable input dataset for hydrological and glaciological modelling to assess the melt contribution of snow-covered areas. The data, which can be used in various climatological and water-related studies, are available for end users at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.901821 (Muhammad and Thapa, 2019).

Alpine region is an important contributor in riverine and watershed ecosystems, which supplies freshwater and stimulates specific habitats of biodiversity. In parallel, extreme events (such as flood, wildfire, early snowmelt, drought and etc.) and other perturbations may reformat the hydrological processes and eco-functions in the area. It is then critical to advance a predictive understanding of the alpine hydrological processes through data-model integration. However, several formidable challenges, including the cold and harsh climate, high altitude and complex topography, inhibit complete and consistent data collection where/when needed, which hinders the associated development of interdisciplinary research in the alpine region. The current study presents a suite of datasets consisted of long-term hydrometeorological, snow cover and frozen ground data for investigating watershed science and functions from an integrated, distributed and multiscale observation network in the upper reaches of the Heihe River Basin (HRB) in China. Gap-free meteorological and hydrological data were monitored from the observation network connecting a group of automatic meteorological stations (AMSs), wireless sensors network (WSN) and runoff measurement spots. In addition, to capture snow accumulation and ablation processes, with the state-of-the-art techniques and instruments, snow cover properties were collected from a snow observation superstation. High-resolution soil physics datasets were also obtained to capture the freeze-thaw processes from a frozen ground observation superstation. The up-to-date datasets have been released to scientists with multidisciplinary backgrounds (i.e. cryosphere, hydrology, and meteorology) and expected to serve as a testing platform to provide accurate forcing data, validate and evaluate remote sensing data and distributed models to a broader community.

This dataset is the Fractional Vegetation Cover observation in the artificial oasis experimental region of the middle stream of the Heihe River Basin. The observations lasted for a vegetation growth cycle from May 2012 to September 2012 (UTC+8). Instruments and measurement method: Digital photography measurement is implemented to measure the FVC. Plot positions, photographic method and data processing method are dedicatedly designed. Details are described in the following: 0. In field measurements, a long stick with the camera mounted on one end is beneficial to conveniently measure various species of vegetation, enabling a larger area to be photographed with a smaller field of view. The stick can be used to change the camera height; a fixed-focus camera can be placed at the end of the instrument platform at the front end of the support bar, and the camera can be operated by remote control. 1. For row crop like corn, the plot is set to be 10×10 m2, and for the orchard, plot scale is 30×30 m2. Shoot 9 times along two perpendicularly crossed rectangular-belt transects. The picture generated of each time is used to calculate a FVC value. “True FVC” of the plot is then acquired as the average of these 9 FVC values. 2. The photographic method used depends on the species of vegetation and planting pattern: Low crops (<2 m) in rows in a situation with a small field of view (<30 ), rows of more than two cycles should be included in the field of view, and the side length of the image should be parallel to the row. If there are no more than two complete cycles, then information regarding row spacing and plant spacing are required. The FVC of the entire cycle, that is, the FVC of the quadrat, can be obtained from the number of rows included in the field of view. 3. High vegetation in rows (>2 m) Through the top-down photography of the low vegetation underneath the crown and the bottom-up photography beneath the tree crown, the FVC within the crown projection area can be obtained by weighting the FVC obtained from the two images. Next, the low vegetation between the trees is photographed, and the FVC that does not lie within the crown projection area is calculated. Finally, the average area of the tree crown is obtained using the tree crown projection method. The ratio of the crown projection area to the area outside the projection is calculated based on row spacing, and the FVC of the quadrat is obtained by weighting. 4. FVC extraction from the classification of digital images. Many methods are available to extract the FVC from digital images, and the degree of automation and the precision of identification are important factors that affect the efficiency of field measurements. This method, which is proposed by the authors, has the advantages of a simple algorithm, a high degree of automation and high precision, as well as ease of operation.