The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the highest and most extensive highland in the world, exerts a significant influence on regional and global climate through thermal and mechanical forcing mechanisms. Known as the 'Third Pole', the TP is experiencing rapid climate and cryospheric changes. This review summarizes recent progress in understanding these changes, including significant warming in the TP over the last half century, driven primarily by increased greenhouse gas emissions, but also influenced by other factors such as cloud amount, snow-albedo feedback, Asian brown clouds, and land use changes. Cryospheric changes include glacier retreat, inconsistent snow cover changes, increasing permafrost temperatures, and active layer thickening. Hydrological processes impacted by glacial retreat have received much attention. Future research should focus on climate extremes, the reliability of reanalyses, and detailed comparisons of reanalyses with surface observations. Spatial issues include identifying elevational dependencies and weekend effects, and understanding temperature change patterns and their causes. These issues are challenging due to the lack of reliable data above 5000 m asl.The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the highest and most extensive highland in the world, exerts a significant influence on regional and global climate through thermal and mechanical forcing mechanisms. Known as the 'Third Pole', the TP is experiencing rapid climate and cryospheric changes. This review summarizes recent progress in understanding these changes, including significant warming in the TP over the last half century, driven primarily by increased greenhouse gas emissions, but also influenced by other factors such as cloud amount, snow-albedo feedback, Asian brown clouds, and land use changes. Cryospheric changes include glacier retreat, inconsistent snow cover changes, increasing permafrost temperatures, and active layer thickening. Hydrological processes impacted by glacial retreat have received much attention. Future research should focus on climate extremes, the reliability of reanalyses, and detailed comparisons of reanalyses with surface observations. Spatial issues include identifying elevational dependencies and weekend effects, and understanding temperature change patterns and their causes. These issues are challenging due to the lack of reliable data above 5000 m asl.