Translated from www.people.com 2nd, Sept. 2004
Sino-US joint expedition found in their recent investigation to the Tibetan Plateau that, glaciers in Tibet, represented by Namunani Glaciers, are showing an obvious thinning under global warming. Scientists concluded that those glaciers accelerated in their retreat.
This expedition has witnessed a severe retreat of the Namunani Glacier. Those independent ice piles around Namunani used to connect with the main glaciers, said Prof. Yao Tandong.
Another sign of the retreat was that scientific staff constantly stepped in snow pools on their way to the Namunani main glacier. These pools, due to melting of ice, were over 1m at some deep sites and 20-30cm at its shallowest. On-spot monitoring and measurement found out a large number of such pits of different shapes in different sizes. This phenomenon told us that glaciers were melting away at an intense rate.
The formation of glaciers is a result of climate change, which directly influenced the rise and fall of glacial surface, as well as changed the maneuvering of the latter part of the glaciers. Discovery of this expedition and studies done in the past few years have all confirmed that with global warming, Tibetan glaciers are undergoing strong disequilibrium in materials by deficit. Prof. Pu Jianchen, assistant researcher of CAREERI and specialist in material balance in glaciers told reporter.
To quantify glacial retreating process, the group has set up twenty monitoring poles along the main stream down the Namunani Glacier. With the help of these poles, scientists will carry out a year’s observation there to grip the main features of accumulation and melting of glacial surface. Using the observed data and statistics, they will also calculate the total volume of the Namunani Glacier and its state of equilibrium.
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