China warns of disasters from warming Tibet plateau - Reuters

[Eugene]

China warns of disasters from warming Tibet plateau
01 Feb 2007 04:11:55 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Chinese scientists have warned that rising temperatures on
the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will melt glaciers, dry up major Chinese rivers and trigger
more droughts, sandstorms and desertification, state media reported on Thursday.

Temperatures on the plateau had risen 0.42 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit)
each decade since the 1980s, the China Daily said, citing the Chinese Academy of
Meteorological Sciences, a government think-tank.

"One of the worst results of the rising temperature on the plateau could be an ultimate
change in the volume of water flowing into the Yangtze, the Yellow and other rivers
that originate in the mountainous region," the paper quoted Xu Xiangde, an academy
researcher, as saying.

-snip-

The U.N. Development Programme has warned that melting glaciers, shrinking an average
131.4 square km annually over the last 30 years -- an area twice the size of metropolitan
Beijing -- according to the China Geological Survey Bureau, could disappear by 2100.
"Decades of research" had found that the plateau acted as a barometer for weather
conditions in other parts of China and the world, Xu said, with satellite data showing the
"strong movement of clouds" above the plateau in July 1998 to be linked to China's worst
floods in decades in the summer of that year.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK222273.htm

[autorank]

1. They get it. Good for them. Now lets do something about it. k&r n/t

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

2. Cool. Now quit building new coal-fired power plants

nm