## 1 Introduction  
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the source of 10 major Asian rivers and covers an area of 2.5 million km\({}^{2}\) with an average elevation exceeding 4000 m above sea level (a.s.l. ), and thus, this region is also referred to as the Asian Water Tower, Roof of the World, and Third Pole of the Earth [1, 2, 3, 4]. Over the past half century, the warming rate on the TP has reached twice the global average, leading to dramatic environmental changes [5], such as rapid lake expansion [6], steadfast glacier retreat [7, 8], and even glacial collapse in recent years [9]. However, the scarcity of observation data due to harsh environmental conditions has impeded scientists from answering scientific questions regarding hydrological, eco-physiological, and biogeochemical interactions on the TP [10, 11]. Large-scale deployment of automatic ground-based observation stations provides the potential to revolutionize the way we understand multisphere interactions and human-nature relationships across the TP. However, the retrieval of monitoring data from ground stations deployed in the farmost areas of interest in extreme environments remains a great challenge. To provide faster and more reliable data collection, most ground stations are deployed close to residential areas to facilitate maintenance and rapid data transmission. Monitoring data can be retrieved through public communication networks. However, observation facilities have been installed close to glaciers, ice lakes, remote forests, and other farmost areas, where the public communication networks are absent and monitoring data are retrieved manually one or two times per year. Thus, to realize the rapid retrieval of monitoring data throughout the farmost areas without public networks, the state-of-the-art Internet of Things (IoT) [12; 13] is essential. In this paper, we proposed an IoT architecture allowing the retrieval of observation data in the farmost areas on the TP. The proliferation of the IoT and its applications in environmental monitoring have enabled the deployment of intelligent monitoring devices in remote areas of interest for real-time environmental sensing [14; 15]. Researchers have illustrated cases of how the IoT can be employed in extreme environments, such as the Arctic or Antarctic [16; 17]. However, none of these previous studies explored the exploitation of the satellite-enabled Internet of Remote Things (IoRT) to retrieve data at the farmost Third Pole of the Earth, i.e., the TP. Furthermore, the introduction of a satellite-enabled IoT in extreme areas has become the only effective way to enhance the operational efficiency of data retrieval and to decrease device setup and data collection costs [18; 19]. In this article, we propose a novel data retrieval framework by using China's first IoT satellite constellation, namely, the Xingyun project, with the goal of transmitting in situ monitoring data from the farmost areas of the TP. We developed a ground IoT terminal device comprising an environmental monitoring device and satellite-based transceiver to rapidly achieve data backhaul. Environmental monitoring devices, such as weather stations, were deployed in the area of interest to monitor the surrounding environment. A satellite-enabled IoT technique, which could resolve the lack of data on the TP, was established while reducing the data backhaul time and cost in the farmost areas without public networks. To verify the effectiveness of the satellite-enabled IoT network in regard to field data transmission from the farmost areas of the TP where public networks are absent, five field experiments were conducted on the TP, which exhibited significance for scientific research. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows:  
* A satellite-enabled IoT network integrating IoT satellites, environmental monitoring devices, and sensors was utilized to retrieve in situ data from the farmost areas of interest on the TP.