Tibet's Glaciers Rapidly Melting, Raising Mekong River Levels - Asahi

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MEILI SNOW MOUNTAIN, China--The "rooftop of the world" is melting. Thanks to global warming, glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau are rapidly liquefying, possibly causing many of the region's water woes--especially flooding--in the past decades. The huge meltdown could cause serious ecological trouble in the future, including water shortages, Chinese experts say. The Tibetan Plateau is the source of many major rivers in Asia. It is estimated that the annual amount of water melting from the glaciers is equal to the total annual flow volume of the Yellow River.

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Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research are monitoring 15 locations on the Chinese side of the plateau. Yao Tandong, 51, director of the institute, said about 46,298 glaciers lie in and around the plateau in China, covering 59,406 square kilometers in total. However, the coverage has shrunk by 7 percent over the past 40 years. On the other hand, the total amount of water melting from these glaciers has increased by 20 percent. As a result, water levels in most of the lakes nearby are rising, which is steadily expanding the sizes of those lakes.

In and around the Tibetan Plateau, 1,091 lakes measure more than 1 square kilometer. Of them, more than half were created from water that had melted from the glaciers. In the central part of the Tibetan autonomous region, many pasture lands were submerged after the expansion of lakes in the 1990s. This kind of natural phenomenon has had ill effects on local people's lives. For example, an entire village community was forced to evacuate three times to different lands.

Despite all the rising water, some are concerned about future water shortages. In Qinghai province, a glacier in the area provides water to the Yellow River. According to the Institute for Cold and Arid Regions Environment and Engineering Research, the glacier shrank by 17 percent from 1966 to 2000. The glacier's rapid shrinkage during that period is 10 times faster than that of the past 300 years, the institute said. Partly because of that, underground water levels in the area around the glacier have sharply dropped. That has caused many of the nearby lakes to dry up and drastically decreased the quantity of water in the Yellow River.

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http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200601040097.html

[phantom power]

1. This whole century is going to suck. Hard.

It's going to suck golf balls thru a garden hose.