02. May 2006
Climate change causes Tibet's glaciers to melt faster
(Xinhua) The Chinese Academy of Sciences has announced that global warming is causing Tibet's glaciers to melt faster than expected at a rate of 7 per cent annually, allegedly triggering droughts, expanding desertification and increasing sandstorms throughout the PRC. It will also have a huge impact on water supplies over much of Asia as many of the continent’s great rivers - including the Yangtze, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow river - all rise on the plateau. The academy has based its findings on meteorological data collected over four decades from 681 Chinese weather stations. It has prompted Yao Tandong, head of the academy’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute to say: "The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe".