A Chinese scientific expedition team started collecting samples at Lake Namtso in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region earlier this week, aiming to understand more about the lake's changes over a lengthy period of time.

As the second largest salt lake in China, Namtso is located at an elevation of 4,718 meters above sea level. 

This is the first time for the team to carry out the surveying work after the ice in Lake Namtso melted earlier this year, according to Wang Junbo, head of the comprehensive observation station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Lake Namtso. They plan to reach the lake center where the water is about 80 to 90 meters in depth. A large-sized platform above the lake will be built from June to July, so as to observe and study the lake water and lake bottom sediments.

The team is also planning to drill through the lake core to a depth of 100 meters to take samples, with an aim to analyze the paleoclimate evolution process and mechanism since 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

According to the latest remote sensing data collected in 2018, the size of Lake Namtso has expanded 63 square kilometers from 1,950 square kilometers recorded in the 1970s. The main reason for the expansion is the increase of precipitation in the area and glacial meltwater to the area. 

(Cover image: Video screenshot)