A Paired Lake–Land Observation Dataset of Mesoscale Lakes over the Tibetan Plateau for Analyzing Lake-induced Thermal and Moisture Modulation

Abstract Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau are sensitive indicators of climate change and important regulators of local land–atmosphere exchanges. However, continuous in situ observations remain limited, especially for mesoscale lakes with lake areas of 100–500 km 2 . Moreover, paired lake–land observations are scarce, constraining accurate assessments of meteorological and surface-exchange differences between lake surfaces and their surrounding terrestrial environments. To address this lack of systematic and continuous observations, we present a paired lake–land observational dataset covering three representative lakes across the monsoon, monsoon–westerly transition, and westerly climate regions. The dataset provides continuous and consistently processed observations from lake and nearby land stations during 2019–23. The dataset includes automatic weather station observations, eddy correlation, radiation components, and corresponding nearby land-station observations. The main variables include air temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, precipitation, shortwave and longwave radiation, and sensible and latent heat fluxes. All records were processed using unified procedures, including time-continuity checks, missing-value flagging, unit conversion, format standardization, and quality control. Initial analyses reveal clear lake–land contrasts. Compared with nearby land stations, lake stations generally show smaller diurnal temperature ranges, higher warm-season humidity, stronger and more persistent winds, lower sensible heat flux, and higher latent heat flux. These results indicate that mesoscale lakes can substantially modify local thermal, moisture, and surface energy-exchange conditions. This dataset provides valuable support for studies of lake–land–atmosphere interactions, remote-sensing and reanalysis evaluation, and lake model improvement over the Tibetan Plateau. The dataset is available at the Tibetan Plateau Data Center and Science Data Bank.