Asia: the Tibetan Plateau

The chapter now tours the continents, all seven: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.

It starts near home, in Asia, with the Tibetan Plateau: the highest and largest plateau on Earth.

A plateau is a landform that rises above the land around it with a more or less flat top, often with steep sides. This one lies north of the Himalayas.

It was made by the same event as the Himalayas: collisions between the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates. 'Tectonic' means the forces caused by the movement of the Earth's crust.

Its size is remarkable: about 2,500 km east to west, 1,000 km north to south, at an average height of over 4,500 metres above sea level.

It affects the climate of Asia, and it is the source of many major rivers: the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Yangtze.

Scientists call it the 'Third Pole', for a precise reason: it holds the largest stores of fresh water outside the polar regions.

So what happens there matters far beyond Tibet. With climate change, melting snow has made existing lakes bigger and created new ones, a change you can see by comparing satellite pictures from 1987 and 2021.