The Himalayas are by far the tallest mountains in the world. This mighty range stretches 1,500 miles from east to west, across Bhutan, Nepal, India, Tibet, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
The Himalayas also shape the region’s climate. They block the clouds! South of the range, moist air moves north from the Indian Ocean. When the clouds hit the Himalayas, they rise and cool. Cool air can’t hold as much moisture. Out comes the rain. It drenches the southern Himalayan slopes like a super soaker. Very little moisture makes it across the range. The windswept Tibetan plateau north of the Himalayas is dusty and dry.
How on Earth did such tall mountains rise? A seriously big collision is how! The mega-collision is between two of the gigantic slabs called plates that make up Earth’s outer layer. The Earth’s plates slowly move, carrying continents along with them. As they move, the plates either grind past each other, pull apart, or collide head-on like a train wreck.
Just such a head-on collision has pushed the Himalayas sky-high. The mountain range got its start about 40 million years ago, as India began slowly crunching into Asia. That collision is still going on, so the Himalayas keep getting taller. To find out how fast, geologists put a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument near the summit of Mount Everest. They determined that each year, the mountain gains another 0.1576 inches.
The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai-Tibetan (Qingzang) Plateau, is a vast, high plateau in Central Asia. It covers most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Qinghai Province in China, and Ladakh in Kashmir, India.
The Tibetan Plateau occupies an area of around 1,000 by 2,500 kilometers, and has an average elevation of over 4,500 meters. It is the highest and largest plateau in the world.
It was formed by the same forces which formed the Himalayas, namely, the movement of the Indian continental plate into Asia. The Plateau has an great effect on climate, and is the main cause of the monsoon rains.