Source:China Tibet News
Xu Lifang July 22, 2015
2015-07-22
The photo shows the snow cover condition in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region on February 14, 2015. (Provided by Meteorological Bureau of TAR)
The monitoring data of Meteorological Bureau in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region shows that from 1981 to 2014, the number of snowy days from all theTibetmeteorological stations had a decreasing trend due to global warming, reducing 4.7 days averagely every 10 years. Of all theTibetmeteorological stations, Sog has the minimum numbers of snowy days, while Gyaca has the maximum. From 1981 to 2014,Tibet’s average annual maximum snow depth showed a decreasing trend as well, reducing 0.47 cm averagely every 10 years.
Known as “Water tower of Asia”, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the birthplace of the Yangtze River, Yellow River, the YarlungZangboRiver, MekongRiver, Indus, Ganges and other famous Asian rivers. Water from these rivers maintains billions of people’s livelihoods on the plateau and downstream regions, so the monitoring and protecting of water resources are of vital importance.
As an important ecological environment factor of Tibetan Plateau, snow cover over the plateau has natural delay functions and redistribution effect within a year on the runoffs of these rivers. Its dynamic changes can directly affect utilization of the water resources on plateau and the downstream area. Therefore, carrying out the Plateau snow cover monitoring studies not only plays an important role in protecting and using these unique water resources in the world, but also has a very important and far-reaching significance in responding to climate change and ecological civilization construction.
