science

Purog Kangri

Purog Kangri is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Purog Kangri rather than just read about it. In short: Purog Kangri (Tibetan: བུ་རོགས་གངས་རི, Wylie: bu rogs gangs ri) is an ice field in the Tibetan Plateau, in Nagqu, China. It is shrinking rapidly.

Key takeaways

Purog Kangri belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Purog Kangri to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Purog Kangri from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Purog Kangri (Tibetan: བུ་རོགས་གངས་རི, Wylie: bu rogs gangs ri) is an ice field in the Tibetan Plateau, in Nagqu, China. It is shrinking rapidly.

Location Purog Kangri was discovered by Chinese and American scientists around 1999. The other two are in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Purog Kangri is in the Nagqu prefecture-level city of Tibet, China. It is in a harsh mountain environment that is not accessible to tourists. It is about 150 kilometres (93 mi) from the double lake. The Purog Kangri ice field is at 33.8550°N 89.8050°E / 33.8550; 89.8050 at an elevation of 6,072 metres (19,921 ft) above sea level. The ice field is the largest in the North of the Tibetan Plateau. It is made up of several ice caps with a total area of 422.58 square kilometres (163.16 sq mi) as of 2002, and a volume of about 52 cubic kilometres (12 cu mi). The glacier snow line is 5,620 to 6,860 metres (18,440 to 22,510 ft) above sea level. The ice field is radial, with over 50 tongues of ice of different lengths that extend from the ice field through wide and shallow valleys. In the areas with lower tongues there are many ice pyramids.

Climate Purog Kangri is near the boundary between the southern part of the Tibetan Plateau, where the weather is driven by the monsoon cycle, and the northern part where it is driven by continental westerly storms coming from the Arctic and the North Atlantic. The latter process has the greatest effect on the ice field. The Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya hold the largest amount of ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Meltwater from the glaciers feeds the Yangtze, Yellow, Indus, Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers. The glaciers have been shrinking since the Little Ice Age.

Shrinkage Ice cores were recovered from the Purog Kangri ice field in 2000, filling a gap in knowledge of climate change in the Central Tibetan Plateau. The longest core was 213 metres (699 ft). The upper 102 metres (335 ft) covered the last 1,000 years, and was analyzed along its length for the δ18O oxygen isotope ratio. The results, correlated and checked against ice cores from other locations, showed a sharp increase in temperature starting in the late 19th century. Between 1960 and 2004 the glaciers in the region have shrunk in volume by 389 cubic kilometres (93 cu mi), or 7%, and in area by 3,248 square kilometres (1,254 sq mi), or 5.5%. The rate of shrinkage is expected to accelerate, with 2/3 of China's glaciers gone by 2060. Measurements using interferometric synthetic-aperture radar showed that the ice field became slightly thicker in 2011–2012, by about 0.44 metres (1 ft 5 in), then in 2012–2016 thinned each year by 0.13 to 0.52 metres (5.1 in to 1 ft 8.5 in). This was mainly due to a steep drop in annual precipitation, from 405.13 to 207.19 millimetres (15.950 to 8.157 in). Another study using TanDEM-X SAR data sets from 2012 and 2016 indicated annual surface thinning of 0.317 metres (1 ft 0.5 in) with a 0.027 metres (1.1 in) margin of error.

Notes

Sources

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Purog Kangri

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Purog Kangri claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Purog Kangri before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Purog Kangri ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Purog Kangri

In research: Purog Kangri appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Purog Kangri in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Purog Kangri is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Glaciers of China, Glaciers of Tibet, Ice fields, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Purog Kangri outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Purog Kangri in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Purog Kangri means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Purog Kangri out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Purog Kangri in simple terms?

Purog Kangri (Tibetan: བུ་རོགས་གངས་རི, Wylie: bu rogs gangs ri) is an ice field in the Tibetan Plateau, in Nagqu, China. It is shrinking rapidly.

Why does Purog Kangri matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Purog Kangri?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Purog Kangri.