Abstract
Rapid anthropogenic emission in South Asia poses environmental challenges to the Tibetan Plateau (TP), but there remains a lack of evidence regarding how these anthropogenic emissions in South Asia have impacted the TP during the 21st century. Here we reconstruct high-resolution deposition histories of NO₃⁻ and NH₄⁺ from 1950 to 2021 using two ice cores retrieved from the Bugyai Kangri (BK) and Noijin Kangsang (NK) sites on southern TP. The ice core records showed that deposition fluxes of NO₃⁻ and NH₄⁺, derived from anthropogenic emissions, exhibited significant accelerating trends at both sites post-2000. The Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) model and HYSPLIT backward trajectory analysis identify two distinct dominant atmospheric transport pathways originating from South Asia. Furthermore, spatial correlation analysis with high-resolution gridded emission inventories revealed significant positive correlations between the annual NO₃⁻ and NH₄⁺ deposition fluxes in ice cores and the anthropogenic NOx and NH₃ emissions from key source regions in South Asia. This study demonstrates the profound impact of anthropogenic emissions on the high-altitude cryosphere, and highlights the urgency of making regional environmental governance strategies in the context of rapid economic development in South Asia.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The ice core geochemical data supporting the findings of this study can be directly accessed through https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18795071. The emission inventory data (EDGAR v8.1) were downloaded from the data portal of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission at https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/. Satellite-derived fire activity data (MODIS/Terra+Aqua Thermal Anomalies/Fire, Collection 6.1, product ID: MCD14ML) were obtained from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) at https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/.
References
Yao, T. et al. The imbalance of the Asian water tower. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 3, 618–632 (2022).
Immerzeel, W. W. et al. Importance and vulnerability of the world’s water towers. Nature 577, 364–369 (2020).
Pritchard, H. D. Asia’s shrinking glaciers protect large populations from drought stress. Nature 569, 649–654 (2019).
Thompson, L. G. et al. A high-resolution millennial record of the South Asian Monsoon from Himalayan ice cores. Science 289, 1916–1919 (2000).
Xu, B. et al. Black soot and the survival of Tibetan glaciers. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 22114–22118 (2009).
Klimont, Z. et al. Global anthropogenic emissions of particulate matter including black carbon. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 17, 8681–8723 (2017).
Ramanathan, V. & Carmichael, G. Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon. Nat. Geosci. 1, 221–227 (2008).
Crippa, M. et al. Insights into the spatial distribution of global, national, and subnational greenhouse gas emissions in the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR v8.0). Earth Syst. Sci. Data 16, 2811–2830 (2024).
Chen, P. et al. South and Southeast Asia controls black carbon characteristics of Meili Snow Mountains in southeast Tibetan Plateau. Sci. Total Environ. 927, 172262 (2024).
Cong, Z. et al. Carbonaceous aerosols on the south edge of the Tibetan Plateau: concentrations, seasonality and sources. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 15, 1573–1584 (2015).
Ramanathan, V. et al. Atmospheric brown clouds: impacts on South Asian climate and hydrological cycle. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 5326–5333 (2005).
Wang, X. X. et al. Black carbon: a general review of its sources, analytical methods, and environmental effects in snow and ice in the Tibetan Plateau. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 31, 3413–3424 (2024).
Zhao, C. et al. Aerosol characteristics and impacts on weather and climate over the Tibetan Plateau. Natl. Sci. Rev. 7, 492–495 (2020).
Behera, S. N., Sharma, M., Aneja, V. P. & Balasubramanian, R. Ammonia in the atmosphere: a review on emission sources, atmospheric chemistry and deposition on terrestrial bodies. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 20, 8092–8131 (2013).
Wolff, E. W., Rankin, A. M. & Röthlisberger, R. An ice core indicator of Antarctic sea ice production? Geophys. Res. Lett. 30, 2158 (2003).
Legrand, M. & Mayewski, P. Glaciochemistry of polar ice cores: a review. Rev. Geophys. 35, 219–243 (1997).
Yao, T., Thompson, L. & Shi, Y. A study of climatic variations since last interglaciation in the Guliya ice core. Sci. China Ser. D 40, 447–452 (1997).
Kaspari, S. D. et al. Recent increase in black carbon concentrations from a Mt. Everest ice core spanning 1860-2000 AD. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L04703 (2011).
Zhao, H., Xu, B., Yao, T., Tian, L. & Li, Z. Records of sulfate and nitrate in an ice core from Mount Muztagata, central Asia. J. Geophys. Res. 116, D13304 (2011).
Hou, S. et al. A 154a high-resolution ammonium record from the Rongbuk Glacier, north slope of Mt. Qomolangma (Everest), Tibet–Himal region. Atmos. Environ. 37, 721–729 (2003).
Sierra-Hernández, M. R. et al. Atmospheric depositions of natural and anthropogenic trace elements on the Guliya ice cap (northwestern Tibetan Plateau) during the last 340 years. Atmos. Environ. 176, 91–102 (2018).
Yang, D. et al. Identifying the natural and agricultural impacts on the glaciochemistry of the Aru ice core on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau. Sci. Total Environ. 906, 167501 (2024).
Zou, X. et al. Ice-core based assessment of nitrogen deposition in the central Tibetan Plateau over the last millennium. Sci. Total Environ. 814, 152692 (2022).
Bhattarai, H. et al. Levoglucosan as a tracer of biomass burning: recent progress and perspectives. Atmos. Res. 220, 20–33 (2019).
Yao, T. et al. Temperature variations over the past millennium on the Tibetan Plateau revealed by four ice cores. Ann. Glaciol. 46, 362–366 (2007).
Kehrwald, N. M. et al. Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L22503 (2008).
Yao, T. et al. A review of climatic controls on δ¹⁸O in precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau: observations and simulations. Rev. Geophys. 51, 525–548 (2013).
Wake, C. P. et al. Anthropogenic sulfate and Asian dust signals in snow from Tien Shan, northwest China. Ann. Glaciol. 16, 45–52 (1992).
Wang, P. et al. Recent high-resolution glaciochemical record from a Dasuopu firn core of middle Himalayas. Chin. Sci. Bull. 53, 418–425 (2008).
Alley, R. B. et al. Visual-stratigraphic dating of the GISP2 ice core: basis, reproducibility, and application. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 26367–26381 (1997).
Cuffey, K. M. & Paterson, W. S. B. The Physics of Glaciers 4th edn (Academic Press, 2010).
Gao, J., Risi, C., Masson-Delmotte, V., He, Y. & Xu, B. Southern Tibetan Plateau ice core δ¹⁸O reflects abrupt shifts in atmospheric circulation in the late 1970s. Clim. Dyn. 46, 291–302 (2016).
Zhao, H. et al. Deuterium excess record in a southern Tibetan ice core and its potential climatic implications. Clim. Dyn. 38, 1791–1803 (2012).
Zhao, Z., Tian, L., Fischer, E., Li, Z. & Jiao, K. Study of chemical composition of precipitation at an alpine site and a rural site in the Urumqi River Valley, Eastern Tien Shan, China. Atmos. Environ. 42, 8934–8942 (2008).
Sierra-Hernández, M. R., Beaudon, E., Gabrielli, P. & Thompson, L. 21st-century Asian air pollution impacts glacier in northwestern Tibet. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 19, 15533–15544 (2019).
Kang, S. et al. Monsoon and dust signals recorded in Dasuopu glacier, Tibetan Plateau. J. Glaciol. 46, 222–226 (2000).
Xu, B. & Yao, T. Dasuopu ice core record of atmospheric methane over the past 2000 years. Sci. China 44, 689–695 (2001).
Zhang, Y. et al. Chemical records in snowpits from high altitude glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau and its surroundings. PLoS ONE 11, e0155232 (2016).
Vallelonga, P. et al. Sea-ice reconstructions from bromine and iodine in ice cores. Quat. Sci. Rev. 269, 107133 (2021).
Wagenbach, D. et al. Sea-salt aerosol in coastal Antarctic regions. J. Geophys. Res. 103, 10961–10974 (1998).
Yao, T. et al. Different glacier status with atmospheric circulations in Tibetan Plateau and surroundings. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 663 (2012).
Keene, W. C., Pszenny, A. A. P., Galloway, J. N. & Hawley, M. E. Sea-salt corrections and interpretation of constituent ratios in marine precipitation. J. Geophys. Res. 91, 6647–6658 (1986).
Schwikowski, M., Döscher, A., Gäggeler, H. W. & Schotterer, U. Anthropogenic versus natural sources of atmospheric sulphate from an Alpine ice core. Tellus B 51, 938–951 (1999).
Paatero, P., Eberly, S., Brown, S. G. & Norris, G. A. Methods for estimating uncertainty in factor analytic solutions. Atmos. Meas. Tech. 7, 781–797 (2014).
Paatero, P. Least squares formulation of robust non-negative factor analysis. Chemom. Intell. Lab. Syst. 37, 23–35 (1997).
Paatero, P. & Tapper, U. Positive matrix factorization: a non-negative factor model with optimal utilization of error estimates of data values. Environmetrics 5, 111–126 (1994).
Reff, A., Eberly, S. I. & Bhave, P. V. Receptor modeling of ambient particulate matter data using positive matrix factorization: Review of existing methods. J. Air Waste Manag. Assoc. 57, 146–154 (2007).
Norris, G., Duvall, R., Brown, S. & Bai, S. EPA Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) 5.0 Fundamentals and User Guide (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2014).
Ito, K., Xue, N. & Thurston, G. Spatial variation of PM2.5 chemical species and source-apportioned mass concentrations in New York City. Atmos. Environ. 38, 5269–5282 (2004).
Taghvaee, S. et al. Source apportionment of ambient PM2.5 in two locations in central Tehran using the positive matrix factorization (PMF) model. Sci. Total Environ. 628–629, 672–686 (2018).
Stein, A. F. et al. NOAA’s HYSPLIT atmospheric transport and dispersion modeling system. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 96, 2059–2077 (2015).
Draxler, R. & Hess, G. An overview of the HYSPLIT_4 modeling system for trajectories, dispersion, and deposition. Aust. Meteorol. Mag. 47, 295–308 (1998).
Lüthi, Z. L. et al. Atmospheric brown clouds reach the Tibetan Plateau by crossing the Himalayas. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 15, 6007–6021 (2015).
Lawrence, M. G. & Lelieveld, J. Atmospheric pollutant outflow from southern Asia: a review. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 10, 11017–11096 (2010).
Mehta, S. K. et al. Diurnal variability of the atmospheric boundary layer height over a tropical station in the Indian monsoon region. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 17, 531–549 (2017).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (Nos. 2024QZKK0400 and 2024QZKK0100), the Science and Technology Project of the Xizang Autonomous Region (No. XZ202501ZY0081), and the project funded by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. GZC20241805). The authors gratefully acknowledge all the websites for contributing essential data to this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
D.Y., B.X., and T.Y. designed the project and wrote the manuscript. B.X., Z.L., N.W., and G.W. collected samples. D.Y., N.W., J.G., X.Y., and D.Q. conducted the experimental analysis. D.Y. and Deji performed the modeling and analysis. All authors commented on and edited the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Communications Earth & Environment thanks Azzurra Spagnesi, Monica Arienzo and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Nicola Colombo. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Yang, D., Xu, B., Li, Z. et al. Accelerated deposition of South Asian anthropogenic emissions on southern Tibetan glaciers in the 21st century. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03444-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03444-9
