The glacier on Tibet-Qinghai Plateau in southwest China is
quickly disappearing, Chinese scientists have said.
After years of research, scientists announced their forecast
that three-fourths of the glacier in the southeast of Tibet and the
marine glacier along the Hengduan Mountains, a series of parallel
mountains ranges running through Sichuan,
Yunnan
and Tibet,
will fade away in 2100 if the temperature rises by 2.1 degrees
Celsius.
A study of the glacier in Mount Qomolangma, known in the West as
Mt. Everest, showed that the glacier in this area will keep
melting.
The melting slowed from 1920s to 1930s and from 1970s to 1980s,
scientists said. Global warming has picked up speed since the
1980s, and the melting pace of the glacier will accelerate.
Taking the glacier on the Tanggula Mountains in Tibet for example,
half of the 2213-square-meter glacier will melt by 2050 if the
temperature rises by 2.4 degrees Celsius. 90 percent will disappear
if the temperature rises by 5.8 degrees.
(Xinhua News Agency May 21, 2005)
