Tibet

By Kenneth Hewitt, China Dialogue
Part I of a three-part series

Glaciers are quite sensitive to climate change and, recently, there have been many reports of major changes in the Himalaya and other parts of High Asia; mostly of glaciers retreating fast. Impacts of a range of glacier hazards, and on the reliability of water resources, are of concern at local, national and transnational scales.

However, there is also a growing recognition that glacial conditions in the region are very diverse, and so are their responses to climate change.

There are some very different implications in different societal contexts, not least in relation to rapid socio-economic changes, water resource projects and security crises. The latter are often more urgent or immediate problems that disrupt or undermine peoples’ capacities to adapt to environmental change.

Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, sometimes called Earth's "third pole," hold the largest ice mass outside the polar regions.

These glaciers act as water storage towers for South and East Asia, releasing melt water in warm months to the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and other river systems that provide fresh water to more than a billion people. In the dry season, glacial melt provides half or more of the water in many rivers.

Glacier changes depend on local weather, especially snowfall, so glacier retreat or advance fluctuates with time and place. Thus, it is inevitable that some Tibetan glaciers advance over short periods, as has been reported. But overall, Tibetan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate.

Global warming must be the primary cause of glacier retreat, which is occurring on a global scale, but observed rapid melt rates suggest that other factors may be involved. To investigate, a team of scientists from Chinese research institutes extracted ice cores from five locations on the Tibetan Plateau.

Green Energy News has picked up on something interesting in the middle of the Olympic controversy.

Tibet is a treasure trove of lithium.

In fact, it boasts the largest source of known lithium reserves in the whole world, according to the China Tibet Information Center.