Translated from Science Times

Recently, researchers at ITP and CAREERI co-found through their study that glaciers around the Tibetan Plateau in high Asian region is receding even faster under global warming, and this in a short run will increase the water supply to rivers in Northwest China, thus will increase their runoff.

Their research shows that in terms of receding scale, oceanic glaciers recede more intensive than continental glaciers, while glaciers at the edge of southeast Tibet and around Kalakunlun Mountains top them all. In the past few years, glacial receding has led to great deficit in its storage, thus temporarily increases water supply to rivers as well as their runoff. This chain effect has become more obvious ever since 1990s.

According to the statistics, the decrease of glacial storage in northwest of China since 1990s has led to 5% increase of glacial runoff there. In Tarimu river valley where a number of high Asian glaciers gather, the decrease of glacial storage end up with about 13% increase in net average water supply in the past decade. All these facts illustrate that the receding of high Asian glaciers have a significant influence on water resource in northwest of China.