China’s glaciers area has shrunk by 26% since 1960 due to Global warming. Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with largest lost on record took place in the last three years noted a Unesco Report. With this around 7000 small glaciers idsappearing completely and the glaciel retreat intensified in recent time.
These important water sources are shrinking and the less availability of fresh water is expected to contribute in the great competition of finding water sources, environmental groups have warned earlier. Glacier retreat also poses new disaster risks.
Tibet, Xinjiang and the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai are the main regions where glaciers located in China. Most of them are situated in the west and north of the country.
Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published the data on march 21 which showed that China’s total glacier area was around 46,000 square kilometers, with around 69,000 glaciers in 2020.
This compares to around 59,000 square kilometeres and around 46,000 glaciers in china between 1960 and 1980, the study showed.
To delay the melting process of glaciers, China has used the technology including snow blankets and artificial snow systems which can slow down its melting process.
The Tibetan plateau is known as the third pole of the world for the amount of ice long locked in high altitude wilderness.
The huge ice loss can be seen in Arctic, Alps, South America and Tibetan Plateau. It is expected that the climate change accelerating the situation, caused by the burning of fossil fuels and raises the global temprature.
In the world, 9000 gigatonnes of ice disappeared from glaciers since 1975 are roughly equivalent to “an ice block the size of germany with the thickness of 25 metres,” Michael Zemp, director of the Switzerland based World Glacier Monitoring Service, said during a press conference announcing the report at the UN headquarters in Geneva.
This would affect the exacerbate economic, environmental and social issues within the world as see level also rises each year by around 1 mm. at the same time these key water sources are dwindling, states UNESCO report.
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