English: Sprawling over 2.5 million square kilometers (0.97 million square miles) the Tibetan Plateau encompasses about one-quarter of the land area of China. With an average elevation of over 4,000 meters (13,123 feet), the Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest mountain area in the world. Mountain ranges that cross and edge the Tibetan Plateau include the Himalayas, Hengduan, Tanggula, Qilian, Kunlun, and Karakoram ranges, which also connect, in turn, with the Pamirs, Hindu Kush, and Tian Shan ranges.

More than 1,500 lakes, both small and large, dot the landscape. The region also contains the world’s third-largest persistent ice mass, following only the Antarctic and Arctic. The lakes and glaciers give rise of many of Asia’s major rivers: the Brahmaputra, Indus, Ganges, Salween (Nu Jiang), Mekong (Lancang Jiang), Yangtze (Chang Jiang), and Yellow (Huang He). The ice mass has earned the Tibetan Plateau the nickname the “Third Pole”. It has also been called the “Water Tower of Asia”, the high altitude and its role in the origination of so many important rivers.

On June 12, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this stunning true-color image of the Tibetan Plateau. Numerous jewel-toned lakes dot the tan, arid landscape of this section of the Plateau. A number of “fair-weather” clouds are scattered over the region.