High Asia is a region dotted with lakes, sensitive to changes that are occurring in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere. It is thus a focus for researchers. Due to widely different dielectric constants of ice and water, satellite passive microwave remote sensing, which has a high revisit rate and is insensitive to the weather, can be used for quick detection of the thawing and freezing of lake ice. Based on the proportions of lake and land areas within the microwave radiometer pixels, the brightness temperature of a lake surface was acquired by linear and dynamic decomposition of the radiometer footprint measurements. The freezing and thawing of 51 sub-pixel level lakes in the High Asia region was closely monitored during the period 2002 – 2016. The data obtainedthere were then validated against the cloud-free MODIS optical snow product data. The validation test selected three lakes with different sizes located in different parts of High Asia-Hoh Xil Lake, Dagze Co and Kusai Lake. Results suggest that the freezing and thawing times are highly correlated with each other and have correlation coefficients of 0.968 and0.987, as measured by the optical and microwave remote sensing approach, respectively. The polished dataset contains lake brightness temperatures and lake ice freeze-thaw in different basins of High Asia. These data can be used to carry out inversion of geophysical parameters of other lakes and to enhance the understanding of lake freezing and thawing in High Asia, thus providing a data base of climate and environmental change in High Asia and also of this region’s response to global climate change.
