در مطلبی که اصلش را می توانید اینجا مطالعه کنید به برخی جزییات و پیامدهای ناشی از ذوب شدن منابع یخ در آسیا اشاره شده است. نویسنده به نقل از ساکنان محلی به کاهش مساحت مناطق زیر پوشش یخ اشاره می کند و برخی نگرانی ها را در مورد نتایج آن بر می شمارد. دمای تبت در طی پنجاه سال گذشته به طور متوسط هر ده سال حدود یک سوم درجه گرم تر شده است که به طور قابل توجهی بیشتر از سایر نقاط جهان است و باعث شده است یخ های منطقه با سرعتی حدود هفت و نیم درصد در سال در حال ناپدید شدن باشد. پیش بینی می شود در طی حدود 25 سال حدود 80 درصد از یخ ها آب بشود.

Melting ice fields pose serious threat to water supply in Asia

LOCAL PEOPLE selling trinkets and prayer flags at the Karola Pass in Tibet are looking nervously at the glacier behind, which has melted halfway up the mountain because of global warming. The ice fields at the roof of the world are shrinking.

“It keeps getting smaller,” said one man, dressed in traditional Tibetan garb, anxiously eyeing the spectacular natural phenomenon that is his livelihood.

Meanwhile, in the Tibetan provincial capital, Lhasa, the Lalu wetland reserve, known as the “lung of Lhasa”, is also shrinking because of global warming and pressure from developers. It generates oxygen for a city starved of air because of its height.

Lalu is the largest and highest natural wetland in the world, covering 12.2sq kms (4.7sq miles), and the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has introduced a 15.5 billion yuan (€1.82 billion) plan to help protect it from destruction.

“Tibet is on the Qinghai plateau and the ecological environment is very vulnerable,” said Gyanpel, director general of the Tibetan Environmental Protection Department.

The temperature in Tibet has risen by up to one-third of a degree every 10 years between 1961 and 2008, which is well ahead of the rest of the world, and nowhere is this more obvious than at the Karola glacier. Ice on the Qinghai plateau is retreating at the rate of seven per cent every year. There are fears that in 25 years, 80 per cent of the glacial area in Tibet and surrounding areas could be gone.

It’s bad news for the local herdsmen who rely on the water from the glaciers for themselves and their yaks and goats, but it’s also bad news for water supplies in the rest of China, India and southeast Asia.