The high mountains of Asia are characterized by a diverse glacier landscape, which is often referred to as the „third pole“ of the earth, as there store huge amounts of ice and snow. The environmentalists at Greenpeace now warn that the glaciers in the Asian mountains melt much too quickly.
China’s glaciers disappear
„The speed of glacial melting in key locations in western China has increased dramatically in recent decades,“ said Greenpeace, sharing the results of the analysis of current satellite data. For example, Laohugou Number 12, the largest glacier in the Qilian Mountains, shrank twice as fast in the last decade as a few decades ago. Between 1959 and 1976, the glacier lost about 6 meters of ice per year – between 2008 and 2018 it was about 13 meters per year on average. The decline of Tianshan Glacier No. 1 in Xinjiang Province has also increased at a similar rate. Its total area has shrunk by about 22 percent over the past 30 years. In the same period, the glacier in Qinghai Province decreased by about 1200 meters. In the meantime, a fifth of the glacier area in China has melted off, say the environmentalists.
„It’s a wake up call for China and the world. Glaciers in China provide water for 1.8 billion people and they melt quickly, „said Liu Junyan of Greenpeace. Unless serious action is taken against climate change, China says about two-thirds of all glaciers in China will have disappeared by the end of the century, according to the environmental organization.
Glacier melt is a practical problem
And the glacier melt is not just a theoretical problem. For example, on 10 August 2018 in the Karakorum Mountains in Xinjiang, a large glacier lake erupted, releasing some 35 million cubic meters of floodwater. Several thousand people had to be evacuated. On October 17, 2018, there was a glacier collapse, which triggered an ice avalanche in the Yarlung Zangbo River, whereupon it was blocked and about 6,600 people had to be evacuated.
In addition, the World Bank predicted ten years ago that China would be the country that will face the most water shortage in the 21st century. This situation is further exacerbated by the melting glaciers. In some areas of western China, average temperatures have risen three degrees or more since the 1950s. Researchers doubt that the glacier melt can be stopped at all.
