Abstract Monitoring of the alpine lakes on the endorheic Changtang Plateau is vitally important in understanding climate impacts on hydrological cycle. Existing studies have revealed an accelerated lake expansion on the Changtang Plateau during the 2000s compared with prior decades. However, the partial hiatus of recent Landsat archive affected the continuation of understanding the lake changes in the recent decade. Here we synergistically used imagery from Landsat and Huanjing satellites to enable a detailed monitoring of lake area dynamics on the Changtang Plateau. Our results present that lakes on the Changtang Plateau continued to expand at a rapid rate of 340.79 km 2 yr −1 (1.06% yr −1 , p 2 yr −1 (0.92% yr −1 , p 2 yr −1 (1.47% yr −1 , p = 0.08), respectively, indicating that glacier retreat alone may not fully explain the recent lake expansion. Intra-annual variations of the selected 24 large lakes fluctuated within 0.22–2.46% (in coefficient of variation) for glacier-fed lakes and 0.17–2.36% for non-glacier-fed lakes. Most of these lakes expanded during the unfrozen period (from May/June to October) and reached to their maximum extents in September or October. By spatially associating our revealed lake changes with climate variables, we observed that the recent lake expansion is more related to precipitation than to temperature, although future efforts are needed for a more comprehensive picture of the lake changing mechanisms.