Lately ITP expedition scientists to the Tibetan Plateau were interviewed by reporters from New York Times magazine. Their topics included the following aspects: the achievement of their trip to the Plateau; possible relationship between glacial melting and global warming; repercussion of global environmental change on social development; significance of studying the Tibetan glaciers; history of Sino-U.S joint expedition and so on.
In answering to these questions, Prof Yao Tandong, Director of ITP and team leader of this expedition first informed the reporter of the importance of Tibetan glaciers. He said that through studying particles, chemical and atmospheric properties, isotopes and variation of microbiology in the ice cores, scientists could tell the evolution of past climatic environment and better understand future environmental changes. Tibetan Plateau was considered a natural laboratory for the study of global change. So far, they have discovered the large scale retreating of the glaciers on the Plateau, leading to a quantity of water supply to the origins of some big rivers in China, thus posed a potential threat to ecology by breaking glacial balance there. He projected that if the glaciers kept on melting at current rate, most glaciers now on the Plateau would disappear by 2100, accompanied by drying of flows in the lower ranges of some glacial rivers. Scientists also found out the law for glacial retreat on the Tibetan Plateau, i.e. Glaciers retreat faster surrounding the plateau than those in the middle. With accelerated retreating of the glaciers, it was very needy to conduct complex glacial expedition, which could provide better restoration of ice cores, carriers of climate record with high resolution, thus guaranteed the efficient study of global change.
In retrospection, China and U.S. have a long history in cooperation in such expedition. As early as 1984, Chinese and American scientists began to join hands on the basis of equality and mutual benefit to conduct in such fields as expedition, equipment preparation, human resources allocation, samples analysis, data sharing and publication of thesis. The past twenty years have witnessed fruitful results from their cooperation in studying Dunde Glaciers, Guliya Glaciers, Dasuopu Glaciers, Puruogangri Glaciers, Mushitage Glaciers, Namunani Glaciers etc. These joint efforts have ensured the advancement of Chinese alpine ice core study in international scientific community. They have also laid a favorable foundation for the future collaboration between China and U.S, esp. since the establishment of ITP, a special institute for Tibetan Plateau research which will simplify the procedure and enhance the efficiency in this collaboration. With an agreement for the next year’s cooperation plan in hand, Prof Yao was optimistic about the progress in Tibetan Plateau research.
Aware of the repercussion of global warming on glaciers on the Plateau, Chinese scientists took it as their duty to study the Tibetan Plateau, hoping to be able to forecast catastrophic whether for the protection of vulnerable ecology and healthy development of social economy in that region.
He also introduced to the reporter studies scientists carried out in this expedition on material balance within glaciers, glacial meteorology, glacial hydrology, chemical monitoring of alpine atmosphere and quaternary investigation. All these will help to explain the evolution of past climate in this region, recover the variation system of Indian Monsoon, and identify the repercussion of industrial pollution from South Asia on the Plateau. It will also discover the effect of global change to the formation of modern glaciers, thus guides us to a reasonable utilization of water resources in West Tibet. In their conversation, Prof. Yao also briefed him on some scientific discoveries, including the detection of the depth of Namunani Glacier with radar, confirming it to be the thickest valley glacier in China, the collection of ice core samples from Namunani Glacier, 6100m of elevation and the successful expedition to Namunani region, a good beginning for further study of this unique place on the Plateau. Their following task was to further analyze ice core samples before jointly publicizing their research results on some academically high-level magazines.
In the end, Prof. Yao told the reporter of the sitings of two monitoring centers on the Plateau: Namucuo complex field observation center and semi-locating station on Mt Everest respectively. He believed these stations would become a pillar in our study of the influence of the Tibetan Plateau on global geology and environmental change.
