The Tibetan plateau plays an essential role in the water supply to Asia’s large river systems and, as the largest and highest mountain plateau in the world, it drives the Asian monsoon and influences global atmospheric circulation patterns. The increase in the Tibetan plateau lake volume since the mid-1990s is well documented, however the drivers of lake growth remain largely unexplained. In this study we investigate changes in lake and glacier volumes, together with changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration at basin scale. We calculate the contribution of glacier mass loss to the lake volume increase for the period 1994–2015. We demonstrate that glacier mass loss does have a limited contribution to the lake volume increase (19 ± 21% for the whole Tibetan plateau). Glacier mass loss is thus insufficient to explain all of the lake volume gain, and despite large spread in various products that estimate precipitation and evaporation, we suggest that an increase in precipitation excess (precipitation - evapotranspiration) may be sufficient to explain the lake volume gain.

青藏高原在向亚洲大型河流供水中起着至关重要的作用，作为世界上最大，最高的高山高原，它驱动亚洲季风并影响全球大气环流模式。自1990年代中期以来，青藏高原湖泊数量的增加有充分的文献记载，但是，湖泊增长的驱动力仍然无法解释。在这项研究中，我们调查了湖泊和冰川体积的变化，以及流域规模的降水和蒸散量的变化。我们计算了1994年至2015年期间冰川质量损失对湖泊流量增加的贡献。我们证明了冰川的质量损失对湖泊体积增加的贡献有限（19±整个青藏高原占21％）。因此，冰川的质量损失不足以解释所有湖泊的蓄水量，尽管估计降水和蒸发量的各种产品分布广泛，但我们建议增加降水过量（降水-蒸散量）足以解释湖泊的蓄水量。