A Comparative Study of Climate Change and Glacier Loss in the Andes and the Tibetan Plateau
Carrion, D'Sa, Lyubarsky, Shaffer
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Glacier Loss in the Tibetan Plateau: Introduction

  



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The impact of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau has largely been understudied in comparison to the extensive research projects in the Arctic and Antarctic regions that have been carried out in recent decades. According to Yao Tandong, Director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, "The plateau's remoteness, high altitude and harsh weather conditions make any research on the region very challenging."1 At the same time, The Royal Meteorological Society claims that the Tibetan Plateau is one of the most sensitive areas in the world to climate change; consensus now holds that its mean annual temperature has increased by 0.3?C/decade over the past fifty years,2 a rate of three- to four-times both global averages and the averages of the rest of its latitudinal zone.3

Yao and his colleagues have been gathering measurements on the Plateau since the 1980s, and have contributed a great deal of valuable data, including analyses of oxygen isotopes found in ice cores that have allowed the scientists to reconstruct temperature records from the 1950s to the present. Scientists have discovered that in the past half-century, 82% of the plateau's glaciers have retreated, and in just the past decade, 10% of its permafrost has degraded.4 Tibet is particularly susceptible to climate change in the winter, where mean temperature increases by twice as many degrees per decade as it does during the summer5 -- 0.32ºC/decade and 0.16ºC/decade, respectively -- and the number of "extreme cold days" has decreased by 0.85 d/decade.6 These increases have had a number of effects on the hydrological cycle and glacier loss on the Tibetan Plateau.


The Hydrological Cycle

1 Qiu J. China: The third pole. Nature 454, 393-396 (2008).
2 Ibid.
3 X. Liu and Chen, 2000.
4 Qiu, J. China: The third pole. Nature 454, 393-396 (2008).
5 X. Liu and Chen, 2000.
6 You et al., 2007.