Tibet's glaciers are melting

2006-05-02 10:04

Beijing - Glaciers covering China's Qinghai-Tibet plateau are shrinking by seven percent a year because of global warming, and the environmental consequences may be dire, reported the country's official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

Rising temperatures have accelerated the melting of glaciers across the "roof of the world".

The temperatures will eventually turn tundra, that spans Tibet and the surrounding high country, into desert, said Professor Dong Guangrong of the Chinese academy of sciences.

Dong said the deterioration of the plateau would trigger more droughts and increase the sandstorms that regularly lash western and northern China.

According to Xinhua, Dong reached his conclusions after analysing four decades of data from China's 681 weather stations.

Dust and sandstorms are increasing

Average temperatures in Tibet had risen 0.9 centigrade since the 1980s, said Han Yongxiang, of China's national meteorological bureau.

He said this accelerated the melting of glaciers and frozen tundra across the plateau.

The Qinghai-Tibet plateau covers 2.5 million square km - about a quarter of China's land surface - at an average altitude of 4 000m above sea level.

Dust and sandstorms are a increasing, particularly in North China, because of deforestation, drought and the environmental depredations of China's breakneck economic growth.

A sandstorm swept across one eighth of China's territory on April 16 and 17. It dumped 330 000 tons of dust on Beijing and reached as far as Korea and Japan.

A China meteorological administration said China's weathermen might soon launch a "dust forecast" in their bulletins.

- Reuters