Song Fuli and Zhou Lili, 18 November 2012
Sometimes described as the engine of the global climate system because of its role in climate and water systems, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western China, with its fragile and sensitive ecosystem, is considered a “canary-in-the-mine” for global climate change.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, also called the Tibetan Plateau, covers about 25% of China’s surface area and includes more than 35,000 glaciers. Three of Asia’s largest rivers, the Yangtze, the Yellow River and the Mekong, have their sources there. Altogether, the rivers originating from the plateau supply water to over one billion people.
But as a result of climate change, temperatures are increasing much faster on the plateau than anywhere else in the world. According to Li Lin, a researcher at the Meteorological Bureau of Qinghai Province, over the past 30 years the annual average temperature has shown a significant rise, increasing at a rate of 0.37 degrees Celsius per 10 years. In the same period of time, the average global temperature has gone up 0.13° Celsius per decade. This increase in temperature is particularly obvious in the winter.