<p>Near-surface air temperature (<i>T</i><sub>a</sub>) is highly important for modelling glacier ablation, though its spatio-temporal variability over melting glaciers still remains largely unknown. We present a new dataset of distributed <i>T</i><sub>a</sub> for three glaciers of different size in the south-east Tibetan Plateau during two monsoon-dominated summer seasons. We compare on-glacier <i>T</i><sub>a</sub> to ambient <i>T</i><sub>a</sub> extrapolated from several, local off-glacier stations. We parameterise the along-flowline climatic sensitivity of <i>T</i><sub>a</sub> on these glaciers to changes in off-glacier temperatures and present the results in the context of several available distributed on-glacier datasets around the world. Climatic sensitivity decreases rapidly up to 2000–3000 m along the down-glacier flowline distance. Beyond this distance, both the <i>T</i><sub>a</sub> of the Tibetan glaciers and global glacier datasets show a slower decrease of climatic sensitivity. In general, observations on small glaciers (with < 1000 m flowline distance) are highly sensitive to temperature changes outside the glacier boundary layer. The climatology of a given region can influence the general magnitude of this climatic sensitivity, though no strong relationships are found between along-flowline climatic sensitivity and mean summer temperatures or precipitation. The terminus of some glaciers remain associated with other warm air processes that increase climatic sensitivity (such as divergent boundary layer flow, warm up-valley winds or debris heating effects) which are evident only beyond ~ 70 % of the total glacier flowline distance. Our results therefore suggest a strong role of local effects in modulating climatic sensitivity close to the glacier terminus, although further work is still required to explain the variable presence of these effects for different glaciers.</p>