tibetan plateau

Webinar: Changing climate, hydrology of the Tibetan plateau

Please join the Environmental Change and Security Program for a
discussion of
Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia:
Developing a Blueprint for Addressing Glacier Melt in the Region

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Video: Green Glaciers: The Melting Grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau

A video followup about climate change impacts and adaptation options on the Tibetan plateau. Read More...
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Madonna and Child, with Climate Change

This is a story about what fear for the climate of the future looks like, on a personal level. I usually try to be optimistic in these entries. This one is less so.

We had been touring the eastern plateau in Qinghai province, western China, for over a week, slowly making our way up to the headwaters of the Mekong river. Each day was sunny and clear, but every evening clouds would gather rapidly. A wall of blustery rain would approach, pushing us to set up our little tents quickly under cover and have a wet meal under plastic.
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Green Glaciers: The Melting Grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau

An enormous amount of attention has been paid to the loss of the ancient glaciers in the Himalayas and across the Tibetan plateau. Their retreat and the loss of glacial mass have been tied to rising air temperatures, longer warm seasons, and shifting precipitation patterns. But while dramatic and newsworthy, the loss of glaciers does not have an
immediate impact on most people and ecosystems in the region beyond dry-season flows. Glaciers represent old reservoirs of water that build up over decades, centuries, and even millennia. However, most of the liquid water resources in the Himalayas and plateau come from seasonally frozen rain, groundwater, and snow, which accumulate each winter and melt over the following spring and summer to enter the rivers, groundwater, and lakes of south and central Asia.
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