ISPRS-Archives The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS-Archives Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. 2194-9034 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W7-1555-2017 WATER LEVEL CHANGES OF NAM-CO LAKE BASED ON SATELLITE ALTIMETRY DATA SERIES Wu Y. J. 1 Qiao G. 1 Li H. W. 1 College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China 14 09 2017 XLII-2/W7 1555 1560 Copyright: © 2017 Y. J. Wu et al. 2017 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLII-2-W7/1555/2017/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W7-1555-2017.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLII-2-W7/1555/2017/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W7-1555-2017.pdf

Nam-Co Lake is the largest saltwater lake in Tibet and less influenced by human activity. In order to study the change of water level of Nam-Co Lake over the past decades and the impacts of climate change on the region, this paper combined height measurements of ERS-1, ERS-2, ENVISAT, ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2. We found that the water level of Nam Co Lake experienced three periods of change, namely, slightly decreasing period (1992–1993), significantly increasing period (1995–2005), and stable period (2006–2015). The change is consistent with the change of meteorological factors in the Nam-Co Basin. The increase of glacier melt water and precipitation in the basin is considered to be the cause of the overall trend of water level.