Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest China - May 21, 2019 (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Lake Namtso
2. Chinese scientific expedition team preparing to set off
3. Various of rubber speedboat sailing on lake, expedition team members on speedboat
4. Locating buoy in water
5. Various of expedition team members pulling locating buoy up
6. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Wang Junbo, head, Comprehensive Observation Station, Lake Namtso, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ending with shot 7):
"This is the first time for us to carry out the surveying work after the ice in Lake Namtso melted earlier this year. We will reach the lake center, where the water is about 80 to 90 meters in depth."
7. Rubber speedboat sailing on lake
8. Various of expedition team members
9. Various of rubber speedboat sailing on lake; expedition team taking water samples
10. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Wang Junbo, head, Comprehensive Observation Station, Lake Namtso, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ending with shots 11-12):
"The water composition changes every year, every day and even every moment. The main reason behind this is that the solar radiation and climate changes will result in changes of the water temperature, and further lead to physical and biochemical changes in the water."
11. Snow mountains, clouds
12. Various of lake water
13. Birds on lake
14. Aerial shot of lake

A Chinese scientific expedition team started sample collection work at Lake Namtso in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Tuesday, with an aim to understand more about changes of the lake in a long 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 us to carry out the surveying work after the ice in Lake Namtso melted earlier this year. We will reach the lake center, where the water is about 80 to 90 meters in depth," said Wang Junbo, head of the comprehensive observation station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Lake Namtso.

According to the scientific expedition team, they will set up a large-sized platform above the lake from June to July, so as to observe and study the lake water and lake bottom sediments.

Apart from setting up the platform, 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.

"The water composition changes every year, every day and even every moment. The main reason behind this is that the solar radiation and climate changes will result in changes of the water temperature, and further lead to physical and biochemical changes in the water," said Wang.

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 increase of precipitation in the area and glacial meltwater to the area.

The survey and research work at Lake Namtso is part of China's second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition covering Tibet and the neighboring Qinghai Province.