China's 'Roof of the World' Glaciers Melting Fast BEIJING
Glaciers covering China's Qinghai-Tibet plateau are shrinking by
7 percent a year due to global warming and the environmental
consequences may be dire, Xinhua news agency reported on
Tuesday. Rising temperatures that have accelerated the melting
of glaciers across the "roof of the world" will eventually turn
tundra that spans Tibet and surrounding high country into
desert, the agency quoted Professor Dong Guangrong with the
Chinese Academy of Sciences as saying. Dong warned the
deterioration of the plateau may trigger more droughts and
increase sandstorms that lash western and northern China. He
reached his conclusions after analysing four decades of data
from China's 681 weather stations. Han Yongxiang of China's
National Meteorological Bureau said average temperatures in
Tibet had risen 0.9 centigrade since the 1980s, accelerating the
melting of glaciers and frozen tundra across the plateau. The
Qinghai-Tibet plateau covers 2.5 million square km (0.9