Dataset of Lake Sarez Basin Climate, Lake Area, and Lake Water Storage from 1992 to 2023​

Lake Sarez (72°30′–73°10′E, 38°05′–38°20′N), located in the Pamir Plateau of eastern Tajikistan, is the world’s largest and deepest high-altitude landslide-dammed lake. Formed in 1911 by a massive landslide triggered by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake, the lake was created when the Murgab River was blocked by the 600-meter-high natural Usoi Dam. The lake covers an area of approximately 89.05 km², with a maximum depth exceeding 500 meters and a lake water storage of approximately 125.5 × 10⁸ m³. Due to its unstable dam and location in a seismically active zone, Lake Sarez poses a significant risk of catastrophic outburst, ranking among the top ten potential natural disasters globally.This dataset provides data for the Lake Sarez basin from 1992 to 2023, including climatic variables (precipitation, snow water equivalent, temperature, potential evapotranspiration), lake surface area, and lake water storage. Lake surface area was extracted from all available Landsat imagery using an improved multi-index thresholding method, combined with slope masking and threshold adjustments. Lake water storage was reconstructed by integrating lake surface area with AW3D 5m high-resolution DEM and GLOBathy bathymetric data. This dataset offers a long-term record of Lake Sarez’s changes, providing critical reference data for studying high-altitude lake dynamics under climate change, disaster risk assessment, and regional water resource management.